ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 27

Although, we assumed custody of the Land Office records on
January 25, 1967, we deferred transferring the records to our building
until after the installation of the new air conditioning system was
completed. This has delayed the accessioning of the records, but the
more important records are listed below along with the other accessions
of the year.

The St. Mary's County records listed below were salvaged from
two basement rooms in the building which houses the county jail. The
water pipes in the shower room above one of the rooms had developed
a leak and water had seeped into the room below destroying some
records and damaging others. Fortunately, the items that suffered the
greatest damage were records of little importance and stationery sup-
plies. However, it is obvious from the list below that severe losses of
records have occurred at one time or another, some of which cannot be
attributed to the courthouse fire of 1831. For example, none of the
proceedings of the County Commissioners predating 1876 are now
extant and there are obvious gaps in the assessment records. On the
other hand, the Levy Lists are complete from 1798 to 1927, and it is
good to know that several volumes of court records containing judg-
ments, minutes and dockets survived the fire of 1831.

Our program for making microfilm security copies of important
county records continued apace. A total of 1,503 volumes were filmed
last year, of which 808 were Baltimore City Land Records and 620
were records of the Baltimore City Register of Wills. The remainder
were mainly marriage records and odd lots of probate records.

Among the church records added to our growing collection last
year were those of St. Paul's Parish of Baltimore City and County. The
Parish was established in 1693 and is one of the largest Protestant
Episcopal parishes in Maryland. The Parish Registers appear to be
complete from 1710. A separate volume index covers the entries of
births, marriages and deaths recorded in the Registers for the years
1710-1933. Unfortunately, the Vestry Minutes dating prior to 1878
are missing except for the month of June 1777.

The loss of the early records of Calvert County, in the Courthouse
fire of 1882, greatly enhances the value of other documentary material
predating the fire. This makes the Parish Register of All Saints Parish
in Calvert County, 1859-1958, a doubly welcome acquisition.

All except one of the Methodist records received last year came
from churches in the Peninsula Annual Conference, which includes the
Eastern Shore of Maryland, as well as Delaware and several counties