58 NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT

	HALL & McCHESNEY:
	Caroline ....................................	4
	Carroll ......................................	10
	Charles ......................................	7
	Dorchester ................................	6
	Frederick ..................................	15
	Howard ....................................	10
	Kent ..........................................	4
	Queen Anne's ..........................	5
	St. Mary's ................................	8
	Somerset ....................................	1
	Talbot ......................................	7
	Wicomico .................. ..... .....	6
	Worcester ..................................	8

Total ................................ 91

In addition to the above, the microfilm staff filmed 232 reels of County
probate records which were added to the Microfilm Collection of the Hall
of Records and herein listed in "Archival Accessions/'

ACTS OF ASSEMBLY

The history of Chapter 77 of the Acts of 1954 is long and unhappy.
In the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Archivist, a summary of its mis-
adventures was given and is here being repeated for the convenience of the
members of the Hall of Records Commission:

"One of the oddities of the 1953 Session of the General
Assembly was House Bill No. 354. The story begins with Chapter
542 of the Acts of 1949, which provided for a penalty to be paid
by anyone presenting for recordation any instrument which was
not in good order. It also made certain special provisions for the
form of instruments presented for recordation in offices where
recording was done by photostat camera. The provisions of this
Act were inadvertently omitted from the Annotated Code of 1951;
therefore, the preamble to the Act of 1953 said, among other
things, that "It is desirable to re-enact these provisions without
change in order to remove any doubts as to their effectiveness."
In the meanwhile, many counties had introduced microfilming as