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"On a Thursday morning at the state Hall of Records in Annapolis, Maryland, about 60 kilometers east of Washington, D.C., a dozen or so people were in the microfilm room, looking at photocopies of land deeds, tax rolls, and church records dating back to the 1630s, when Maryland was first founded as a British colony. Another 10–15 people were in the main hall, carefully transcribing documents often worm-eaten and brittle with age, the words within them sometimes grossly misspelled."