30 TWENTY-SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT

The transfer of the correspondence of Governor Theodore R. Mc-
Keldin for the biennium 1957-1958 means that all of Governor McKel-
din's papers are now in our custody.

Although it did not acquire representation in the Legislature until
it was created a county by the Constitution of 1851, the Howard Dis-
trict of Anne Arundel was established by an Act of Assembly passed in
1839 as a separate political unit, in every other respect the equivalent of
a county. As a result, many of the record series acquired from the
Howard County Circuit Court last year begin in 1840. Among the
records transferred are the Court Proceedings which lack only a few
years of being complete to 1933. The Commission records and Test
Books are also virtually complete. The license records, usually of little
importance, are of interest in Howard County because they include the
marriage licenses, which are customarily listed separately.

From Worcester County we acquired three volumes of early
Marriage License records and two volumes recording the Incorporation
of Churches. We also received three volumes recording births and
deaths from 1898 to 1906. Any vital records predating 1914 are es-
pecially useful because the State Health Department did not begin
collecting such records systematically until that date.

The old records transferred by the Montgomery County Depart-
ment of Finance were discovered in the course of a survey of the De-
partment's records by our Records Management Division. The Levy
Books date back almost to the beginning of the County. Unfortunately,
much of this series is still missing.

Our program for preparing security copies of the county land
records is described in detail elsewhere in this report. We need mention
here only that last year film copies of the land records of Harford and
Washington Counties were acquired and that copies of nearly a thou-
sand volumes of Baltimore City land records were added to those al-
ready on hand, bringing this series up to 1893-

Although we were not so active in collecting church records as in
previous years, we did add more than a hundred items to our holdings
of such materials, most of them microfilm. One of the originals de-
posited was the Minutes of the Trustees of Washington Chapel, 1800-