Report of the Committee. vii

to each of these departments for the papers obtained from them, and a
duplicate retained by the Committee.

The Papers as they came to us had no mark of ownership on them,
nor do we believe the State has ever placed a stamp on any of its
archives: had this been the case, much of the valuable material rescued
by Mr. Ridgely would doubtless still have formed part of the records of
the State. The Committee, recognizing the fact that the Society is
responsible for the safekeeping and return of these papers, have had
each item plainly stamped in blue ink with the following device :

Archives

of the State of

Maryland.

so that further loss might be guarded against.

The Society is probably aware that the General Assembly of 1846, by
their 27th Resolution, deposited a number of the early records with us.
They were briefly described in the Catalogue made by Mr. Lewis Mayer
in 1854, and are still in our possession. In addition to these the Society
received from the family of the late Rev. Dr. Alien two volumes he had
used in the preparation of Alexander's Calendar, and they purchased
from a dealer in second-hand books two volumes that had been sent
from Annapolis with a large collection of waste paper; a Council Journal
of 1692—3 given to the Mercantile Library Association is also among
the Archives. All these, with the collection recently received, have been
systematically arranged, and a description more or less minute as the
volume seemed to demand has been made of each. This has been abso-
lutely necessary both for this report and so as to mark out definitely a
line of procedure in the first volume of the Archives. When the vol-
umes had been thoroughly analyzed, the Committee after a careful
examination of them decided that as the Proceedings and Acts of the
early Assemblies presented an almost unbroken record from the begin-
ning, this should constitute the first volume; for of the Proceedings only
those of 1637/8 had been printed, and of the three hundred or more
laws passed up to 1664 the full text of only six was given by Bacon in
his compilation of 1765.

It was desirable, before any transcribing was done, that the Committee
should have the service of a competent person to edit and have continu-
ous supervision of the work; for no member of the Committee could
give his entire time to the preparation of the volume. They recognized
the fact that but few men have the knowledge, inclination, accuracy and
time for such work, and they could suggest but one gentleman who pos-
sessed that familiarity with the early history of the State and who
combined the requisites necessary for carrying out the Committee's plan.
They therefore invited Dr. William Hand Browne to edit the series. Dr.
Browne cheerfully accepted the Committee's invitation, and with the aid
of copyists began work in February, 1883.