LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

To His Excellency,

PHILLIPS LEE GOLDSBOROUGH,

Governor of Maryland.

Sir :I have the honor to present herewith the Biennial Report of the Commissioner of the Land Office, which deals with the progress of the office for the last two years (fifteen months of which I have been incumbent), showing the amount of work accomplished, and suggesting ways to make the office more efficient, and giving the lawyer, genealogist, title-searcher and investigator an insight into what the office contains, and how to find it.

Very respectfully,

Court of Appeals Building,
Annapolis, Maryland.

JOHN J. HANSON, Commissioner of the Land Office.

THE ORIGIN, OBJECT AND VALUE OF THE

LAND OFFICE.

The grant of the Province of Maryland to Lord Baltimore gave to the Proprietary practically the absolute ownership of the land contained in the Charter. He had the right to constitute Courts, grant lands and almost all the powers of the sovereign of England.

At the time when Maryland was settled, land was considered to be of prospective value only, and in order to render it valuable, it was necessary to offer inducements to settlers to come and buy or lease, cultivate and otherwise improve the lands, and therefore Lord Baltimore sent out with his first expedition extremely liberal Conditions for Plantations. These Conditions were rules and regulations for the grant of lands to adventurers into the province. The first Condition on record in the Land Office is dated at Portsmouth in England the 8th day of August, 1636. The first Condition not having been recorded, and not in existence, but grants under its terms appear in the records. In the original Condition for Plantations it was declared that a legal title should be made to all purchasers under the Great Seal of the Province, yet these grants were issued under the hand and seal of the Governor, and not until the year 1644 were patent grants authenticated by the Chancellor under the Great Seal of the Province, according to the English mode of making such grants. Since the Revolution patents have been authenticated by the signature of the Governor under the Great Seal of the State.

The increase in population and the demands for lands so increased that in the year 1680 a land office was established and all proceedings relating to granting of land were made and kept of record, certified copies of which, as of any other records, are held to be legal evidence. By the Acts of 1780 and 1781 all the lands of those adhering to the mother country and of British subjects, were confiscated to the use of the State and were sold by a Commission, and also largely awarded to the officers and soldiers who faithfully served in the revolution in the Maryland Line. The Act of 1781 created a Land Office for the Western Shore and one for the Eastern Shore and placed each of them under the direction and care of a Register. In 1841 these two offices were consolidated and the present Land Office was established at Annapolis. By the Constitution of 1851, the "Commissioner of the Land Office" was created and directed to perform the duties formerly discharged by the Chancellor, Register and Examiner-General, and to act as

Judge in caveat cases. In 1853 the General Assembly passed an act declaring the Court of the Commissioner of the Land Office to be a Court of Record. The Act of 1862 and the Constitution of 1864 made the Commissioner of the Land Office the keeper of the Chancery Records and of the ante-revolutionary and revolutionary papers. By the Constitution of 1867 he was further required to collect, arrange, classify and keep all papers, records and relics connected with the early history of Maryland.

Chacellor Bland, in his legal and historical opinion in the case of Cunningham vs. Browning, 1 Bland's Reports, says: "The Land Office must be considered the fountain and depository of the primitive muniments of title to all the landed. property in the State-in which respect, the surveys returned to, and the patents recorded in it, together with the Chancery Records, 'constitute Maryland's Domes' Day Book,' in which a more accurate description of all the lands of the State is to be found, than of the lands in the records of any country whatever."

Besides performing the duties required by the Acts mentioned, the Commissioner of the Land Office, among other things, has to issue warrants, furnish copies, prescribe rules and regulate the conduct of the Surveyors in making surveys and returning certificates of plats; to examine and pass upon certificates returned to his office by surveyors and to hear, examine and decide upon all caveats which came before him as Commissioner.