Maryland Land Records Research, Part 1

I just finished my last semester of law school, and one of the classes I took was about Federal Land Management. That class, together with my interest in history (especially local), and while studying/muddling through property lectures for the bar exam, got me interested in the history of my property. Specifically:

How far back could I trace the ownership of my property?

This post, part one, is designed to serve as an introduction to my research, so let's start with the basics. To trace ownership, we need to start at the present and work backwards When I purchased my home in 2008, I received the property in fee simple (absolute), which is the highest ownership interest that any private party can have in real property. If you "own" your property, you probably have the same arrangement; or you might have conditions on your ownership. Your deed should explain how the property was transferred from the previous owner to you.

To determine how far back we can go, we need to have an understanding of the state of ownership where we live. I live in Maryland, which was one of the original 13 colonies. On June 20, 1632, King Charles I (whose wife was Henrietta Maria of France, namesake of Maryland) granted a charter to Caecilius Calvert, Baron of Baltimore (Calvert's wife was Anne Arundell, namesake of the county where I now live). The original province included all of Maryland, as well as Delaware, and parts of what is now Pennsylvania. This grant of land from the Crown to Calvert is beginning point for all land ownership in Maryland, and conversely, the end point for my research. Theoretically, all land in Maryland should be able to be traced back to this first grant.

For those that live in public land states (states that were formed out of land acquired by the federal government), the property would be traced ultimately to the original grant (or land patent) from the federal government.

Now you might be wondering about land ownership before England, or ownership by Native Americans. Aside from the fact that I am not aware of any available records to research, the very evidence of a sovereign transfer of land via the land patent is the starting line for tracing land, so that's where we will start (or end).

Our best resource here in Maryland is this website, a project of the Maryland State Archives. It requires registration to use but is otherwise very useful for locating records. And it's pretty amazing how much is now available online. There are other resources as well, which I will introduce as they become useful.

In the next post, I'll take a look at the deed from 2008 when I bought my property. From there, we'll begin the journey into the past--and see how far we can go.

I passed the Maryland bar exam!

Some general stats: 848 passed out of 1,367 total scores. 62.0% pass rate among all takers. Last year: 827/1,316 for 62.8%. No breakdown yet among first time test-takers.

I'm not a lawyer yet. I have to take a short online course, and then the official swearing in ceremony will be in December. ALMOST...

Law school graduation

Law school recognition ceremony

Five years ago, I applied to the University of Maryland Law School and was denied. Four years ago, I applied and was denied again. After spending a year at UDC, I transferred into Maryland. Today I got my revenge: I am graduating magna cum laude and one of the top students in my class.

Found in the yard

Near the BWI Rail Station

When it snows 30 inches in a major east coast city, where do you put all the snow?

In the parking lots around M&T Bank Stadium. This picture does not do it justice. These piles are 25-30+ feet high and cover several acres.

Law in Plain English: Comptroller v. Wynne

This is one in a series of posts designed to describe court decisions in plain English. For more detail and background on the legal issues, see the link to the case below. For similar posts, click here.

SCOTUSblog: Comptroller v. Wynne

Argument: Nov 12 2014 (Aud.)

Background: The Wynnes are part owners of Maxim, a company that does a national business providing health care services. For tax purposes, the business is treated as an S corporation. As a result Maxim's income was "passed through" to its owners for federal income tax purposes, and the Wynnes reported a portion of the corporation's income on their 2006 individual federal income tax return. Because Maryland accords similar pass-through treatment to the income of S corporations, the Wynnes also reported pass-through income of Maxim on their 2006 Maryland tax return. A substantial portion of the pass-through income had been generated in other states and was taxed by those states for the 2006 tax year. The Comptroller of Maryland made a change in the computation of the local tax owed by the Wynnes and revised the credit for taxes paid to other states on the Wynnes' state tax form. According to the Comptroller, Maryland law allowed the Wynnes to receive a tax credit against their Maryland state taxes for income taxes paid to other states, but it did not allow the Wynnes to claim a credit against their Maryland county taxes. The net result was a deficiency in the Maryland taxes paid by the Wynnes, and the Comptroller issued an assessment. After several appeals, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the failure of the Maryland income tax law to allow a credit against the county tax for a Maryland resident taxpayer with respect to pass-through income of an S corporation that arises from activities in another state and that is taxed in that state violates the dormant Commerce Clause of the federal Constitution.

Issue: The question before the Court is whether the United States Constitution prohibits a state from taxing all the income of its residents -- wherever earned -- by mandating a credit for taxes paid on income earned in other states.

Holding:  In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Maryland’s personal income tax scheme violates the dormant Commerce Clause.

Rosie + Mike 1, Possum 0

3:45 AM: Tracy wakes me up to tell me that our Belgian Malinois Rosie has cornered a possum in the backyard. Rosie believes it is her mission in life to protect the perimeter of our property at all costs. She is in her zone. This is what she was born for. The possum is sitting on top of the fence post (six foot high stockade fence) and won't budge. Rosie, who has an NBA-worthy vertical leap, is nipping at the possum's face. Possum still won't budge. Finally, I took a broom and gave Mr. Possum a good shot to knock him off the fence. Problem solved, for now. Rosie took another 20 minutes to calm down and come back inside.

4:15 AM: My alarm goes off. Time to get ready for work...Ugh.

Fighting the wind

I wanted to get in a short flight before all the snow melted, so I programmed a short autonomous flight around the neighborhood. Perhaps I should have entitled this video "beware the wind," because it was definitely a factor. The current weather shows winds out of the west at 14 mph and gusting to 26 mph. As you see particularly in the first minute of the flight (and then at the end), the Phantom is heading southwest and really fighting the wind to stay on course and speed. It seems that today's flight is a good measure for what you can expect out of the Phantom under similar windy conditions.

Autonomous flight at Westfield Annapolis Mall

I have no idea if there is such a thing as having trust in a quadcopter drone. But there is certainly some amount of nervousness in sending her off and hoping (praying?) that she comes back. My previous autonomous flights were in areas close to home and areas that I could get to on foot. Today's flight went a step (or two) further as I flew from the top of the parking garage at Westfield Annapolis Mall. Of course, this means flying above a busy parking lot filled with traffic. Here was my programmed flight path, starting at the red chevron and proceeding counter-clockwise:

As you can see from the screenshot, the route was designed to take my Phantom around the outskirts of the mall and then return home. The programmed altitude is 50m (above the starting point on the third floor of a parking garage); so roughly 200 feet AGL. I also programmed the Phantom to flight faster--twice as fast as my previous autonomous flights. As a result, this flight took barely five minutes. I also ran the video through GoPro Studio to remove some of the barrel distortion. Other than a few moments where the Phantom was out of sight and my heart skipped a beat, everything went exactly as planned. I could even see the quadcopter at its furthest point away. Here is the video:

The only time I used the remote controller was to land the Phantom once it had returned to hover at the starting point. All of the rest of the flight, from start up until then, was autonomous from my pre-programmed flight plan.

Baymeadow Industrial Park flight

Flying at a new site: the Baymeadow Industrial Park off Ordnance Road. For this flight, I reconfigured the GoPro camera to the "medium" field of view setting (127°) as opposed to wide (170°); in this configuration there is less barrel (fisheye) distortion, but you don't really see any of the horizon as you did with the wide field of view.

It was bound to happen: the inevitable first crash

I was flying my Phantom on a practice high-speed run, low to the ground. You should try to avoid trees. I didn't. Unfortunately, I crashed onto a hard surface. Fortunately, the only damage was to one of the plastic prop-guards.  No other noticeable problems. It flew fine afterwards, too.

Neighborhood Flight

Down the street, around the corner, past the bank, stopping momentarily at Rite Aid to view the intersection of Mountain Road and Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard; then past Checkers and over "hostile" terrain before returning home.

Autonomous Flight at Freetown Elementary School

At the end of the video, the Phantom started to go back to Waypoint 1. Apparently I forgot to add a landing step! I was able to take control of the Phantom and land it manually. Won't forget that step next time...

A view of the Walmart construction site at Ritchie Highway and Jumpers Hole Road in Pasadena, Maryland

A view of the Walmart construction site at the intersection of Ritchie Highway and Jumpers Hole Road in Pasadena, Maryland.

Close call

I was flying the Phantom this afternoon when I lost control of it. Still not sure why--it wasn't very far away. Maybe some type of interference. Anyways, when the quadcopter can't contact the remote control, it simply returns to the same spot where it took off. Here, I didn't anticipate that someone else would drive past me on this newly-constructed parking lot...and it ended up being a close call! For what it's worth, the Phantom landed less than 10 feet from the spot where it took off.

Phantom test flight

Here is the (mostly) raw video from the first test flight of my DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter. I have a GoPro camera on the Phantom.

 

The first whistleblowers

In today's age of whistleblowers, it's worth noting that the practice is hundreds of years old. One of the first, although not commonly recognized as such, was at the center of one of the most important Supreme Court cases in our nation's history.

In 1816, the Congress of the United States passed a law which provided for the incorporation of the Second Bank of the United States. The Bank first went into full operation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1817, the Bank opened a branch in Baltimore, Maryland. Soon thereafter, the General Assembly of Maryland passed an act designed to impose a tax on all banks in the State of Maryland that hadn't been chartered by the legislature (the Baltimore Branch of the Second Bank of the United States was the only such bank).

James W. McCulloh (right; misspelled McCulloch in the eventual Supreme Court case; and not to be confused with James H. McCulloch, who was the customs collector in Baltimore at the same time), cashier of the Baltimore Branch of the Second Bank of the United States, refused to pay the tax. The State of Maryland argued that because the Constitution did not specifically state that the federal government was authorized to charter a bank, the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional. The courts in Maryland agreed; but in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court reversed. Chief Justice John Marshall famously expounded upon the scope of Congressional powers under Article I of the Constitution, and in particular, the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Most of that history is well known. What is less known is how the case came to the courts in the first place. The Maryland law passed to tax the Bank included the following provision:

And be it enacted that the President, cashier, each of the directors and officers of every institution established or to be established as aforesaid, offending against the provisions aforesaid shall forfeit a sum of $500 for each and every offence, and every person having any agency in circulating any note aforesaid, not stamped as aforesaid directed, shall forfeit a sum not exceeding $100, every penalty aforesaid to be recovered by indictment or action of debt in the county court of the county where the offence shall be committed, one-half to the informer and the other half to the use of the State...

John James was the informer who filed the lawsuit against McCulloh for failure to pay the tax, knowing that he would recover half of the prescribed penalties (today, this sort of whistleblower claim is sometimes called a qui tam action). But because McCulloh ultimately prevailed, John James was never able to recover from his whistleblower claim. Maybe that's one reason why very little is known about James. A contemporary directory of Baltimore lists a tin manufacturer named John James. Beyond that, there isn't much to go on.

The uniforms for this week's Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial are...interesting.

This morning, an article about this uniform said: "Yes, that's the outline of a Terrapin on the helmets." Not so much. I can see how the shape sort of looks like a turtle, but it's pretty obvious that it's not the outline of a Terrapin with the American flag on it--it's the outline of Fort McHenry with the American flag on it! The article has since been corrected.