Introduction

As part of our ongoing Biographical Research Series, the Maryland State Archives is pleased to present the following biographical sketches, accompanying photographs, and chronological outline of women who have served or are serving as judges on Maryland state courts including the circuit, district, appeals, special appeals, and orphans' courts.  We have also included Marylanders who have been appointed to the federal bench.  While in some cases, staff has started mining local newspapers for relevant articles, the sketches are drawn primarily from the historical collection of Maryland Manual biographies and are available on line at the Maryland State Archives web site: mdsa.net.  They also can be accessed in electronic form from the judicial branch pages of the Historical List on-line and by name using the Search the Archives option on the Maryland State Archives home page (mdsa.net).  They represent the state of the biographical file at the time a judge left state-wide public service, and are not intended as current biographies, except for anyone currently in State service as reflected in the web-based Maryland Manual On-Line.  The chronology is intended to provide an historical profile of the contribution of women to the judiciary through their opinions and other writings.

The Archives would like to encourage members of the Maryland Chamber National Association of Women Judges to help us update our biographical files.  We would be pleased with any contributions, including family information, photographs and office-related memorabilia, that would provide a more complete and accurate account of members' careers.  Also, the web version can encompass anyone inadvertently missed, and we would be grateful if any omissions were brought to our attention.

The following pages were prepared by the Archives' Director of Biographical Research, Emily Oland Squires, Research Archivists, Karen Hare and Jennifer Hafner, Archival Interns designated as Kathleen O'Ferrall Friedman Research Fellows, Joanna Berger, Alicia Brooks, Jennifer Copeland, and Lisa McTaggart, and Archives Webmaster and Editor for Electronic Publications, Lynne MacAdam.  Staff would be pleased to work with any volunteer and paid intern efforts to correct, collect and publish additional biographical information.  This project has been funded cooperatively by the Maryland State Archives, the Maryland Bar Foundation, Inc., the Baltimore Bar Foundation, and the Maryland Chapter of the National Association of Women Judges.  The Archives would welcome volunteers and financial support for student interns to expand and improve upon what we have begun.  Any contributions are tax deductible and will be applied directly to the specific purposes for which they are given as provided for in the legislation creating the State Archives Fund enacted in 1993.

This list, accompanying biographical information, and chronology are by no means complete.  We are making every effort to update the material on a regular basis as time and resources permit.  We would hope that the Association would look upon the collection of additional biographical information about its members, and the preparation of biographies in electronic form on the web, as an achievable and worthy goal.  How well we remember those who represented us and what they did is closely tied to how highly government is valued and the degree to which the record of government can be improved.
 

Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr.
State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patents
April 10, 2002

© Maryland State Archives, 2002