Icon Fugitive Public Records

Fugitive Public Records

Recently a great deal of interest has been aroused in the definition of fugitive public records and their recovery by the forced return of the North Carolina copy of the Bill of Rights. Maryland's copy is still at large. For more information see:

Public Records in Maryland, except for those still needed by public agencies for their daily operations, are the curatorial and legal responsibility of the Maryland State Archives. This legal responsibility encompasses all records that were ever compiled by, or were the responsibility of, public officials, elected, or appointed, from the founding of Maryland in 1632 by Charter from King Charles, to the present.

Public records, from time to time, make their way into the manuscript market for a variety of reasons, not all of which are sinister. Conscientious members of the public often preserve them from places where they have been illegally discarded or inadvertently misplaced. For a definition of what constitutes a public record in Maryland and the possibility of the State providing a finder's or recovery fee to those who in good faith or by chance, preserved the record from certain destruction, see: ATTORNEY GENERAL (Annual Report, and Official Opinions), vol. 64, p. 273, 1979/12/31, MSA C1944.

Examples of fugitive public records that have been returned in good faith to the State Archives include:

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