EXTRACTS of DEEDS AND INDEXING. By the Act of 1874, all books containing deeds and transfers of soldiers' lots, and all other land record books, then in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, were transferred to the Land Office, and it was made the duty of the Commissioner to receive and have the custody of all the books and extracts aforesaid, and of all other extracts of deeds which might hereafter be transferred to his office, and to give certified copies of such deeds and extracts, and to make searches for the same when required. By the same Act the Circuit Court Clerks of the respective counties, and the Clerk of the Superior Court of Baltimore City, were required to make extracts of deeds in a certain form therein prescribed, and to "transfer the same on or before the first day of June, in each year, to the Commissioner of the Land Office," whose duty it was made, by the next succeeding section of the Act, to "receive and carefully file among the records of his office all extracts of deeds transferred to him by virtue of this Act, and all such as shall hereafter be transmitted to him by the Clerks of the Circuit Courts of this State, and when he shall have received a sufficient number of such reports from the same county to form a record book of the proper size, he shall cause the same to be well and substantially bound in leather and placed among the records of his office." By the Revised Code (section 6, page 522), the Judges are required to examine the Land Records of their respective counties, and to see that the Clerks perform these duties. By the Act of 1876 it was made the duty of the Commissioner of the Land Office to have indexed the extracts of deeds deposited in his office, and to continue the indexes as the extracts came into his possession. It was the purpose of the Legislature in requiring these extracts to be made and preserved to guard and protect the muniments of land-title from destruction by carelessness or fire, and the fact that the Record Offices of St. Mary's, Cecil, Dorchester, Harford, Calvert and Baltimore counties were destroyed by fire, with all their records, attests the wisdom of having such copies to supply loss and prevent the trouble and confusion which would arise from the loss of record evidence of the title to land. In the course of over two hundred years the extracts of deeds have grown to an enormous bulk, and were until the passage of the Act of 1876 without indexes later than 1815. For the continuance of the indexes to date the Act of 1876 was passed. Without such indexes the extracts are practically valueless, for without them it would be almost impossible in the vast number deposited in the Land Office to find in a short time any particular record of title. The payments made to the Court Clerks for recording deeds in the county or city where they are placed on record includes the cost of making the extracts, and the second record of title to each tract of land preserved in the Land Office is made without additional cost to the owners of the property. The indexes of the extracts of land title, which the Commissioner of the Land Office is required to have made under the Act of 1876, are full and complete. The name of the grantor and grantee and the name of the land, if any, are indexed in separate volumes. The clerks employed in making the indexes are not paid regular salaries, but receive pay for the amount of labor actually performed. THE RECORDS OF THE OFFICE. The records in the Land Office now embraces the following: Land Office Records, proper...... Provincial and General Court Records Chancery Records and Dockets........ EXTRACTS OF DEEDS: Miscellaneous, Series M. S., I to 12, 1788 to 1823, and indexes.... Miscellaneous, Series A. G., 1 to 19, 1792 to 1815, and indexes ..... Miscellaneous, Series E. H., I to 35, 1815 to 1849, and indexes......... Allegany County, 19 volumes and 4 indexes. 331 vols. 142 220 66 25 vols. 166 116 5 66 13 24 66 18 66 6 ΙΟ 66 13 66 107 6 29 Anne Arundel County, 22 volumes and 3 indexes.. Total, 21 In addition to the foregoing are 45,000 certificates of survey and 12,415 bundles of chancery papers, and a very large number of maps and miscellaneous papers. More than eleven thousand certificates have been jacketed, numbered and indexed, and about 1,000 chancery cases have been likewise treated. Appendix No. 1 contains a list of the Land Office books with their respective contents, etc. EXTRACTS of dEEDS. Extracts of deeds from Baltimore City and the several counties of the State have been transmitted to this office in compliance with Sections 54 and 55 of Article 17 of the Code of Public General Laws as follows: Allegany county-complete to September, 1899. Baltimore county-complete to October, 1898. Calvert county-no extracts in this office from 1817 to 1882, excepting from December 5th, 1863, to June 1st, 1867, and from December, 1873, to June, 1875. Extracts complete from June, 1882, to May, 1899. Caroline county-complete to May, 1899. Montgomery county-complete to January, 1899. THE MILITARY LANDS. The office has a large and valuable map of the military lots comprised in Allegany and Garrett counties, which were awarded to the officers and soldiers of the Mary |
