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A passion for public records runs in Michael McCormick’s family. His mother, Susan McCormick, has researched about 12 generations of her family tree, building multicolored fan charts of ancestors’ names going back to people living in Europe around A.D. 1200.

Genealogy is important to the <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/my-family-history/getting-started?lang=eng" target="_blank">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a>, of which Susan is a member, but her interest in her family’s past goes beyond religion, she said. The Gardners, Pa., resident says her ancestors are present in her everyday life. And she finds them using public records.

“There is so much information in those records that I can’t personally contain myself with the excitement,” she said. “There are so many hidden secrets in there.”

Susan knew that her family emigrated from Europe to Baltimore during the 19th century, but she wanted to learn more. So about 25 years ago, she started making the two-hour trek to the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. In weekly trips taken over years, she scoured everything the office had — newspaper articles, death records, marriage records, birth certificates — in search of documents related to her family names. As she found them, they led her to even more names.

Now, working with a nonprofit genealogy group, Michael — who shares his mother’s ancestral enthusiasm — has gotten millions of vital records from Maryland online, accessible to all at no cost. The creation of what advocates call the <a href="https://archive.org/details/maryland-state-archives" target=_blank>“Maryland Motherlode”</a> was hailed by genealogists and historians as other jurisdictions ponder — or resist — similar moves.

Michael was nearing completion of a PhD program in public history at Middle Tennessee State University when he started working as an intern last year with <a href="https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/" target=_blank>Reclaim the Records</a>, a nonprofit that aims to improve access to public documents. He made up his own assignment: giving anyone with an internet connection access to Maryland records that were previously available only to those able to travel to Annapolis.

“I just knew the value of the records from my own research,” he said. “I don’t know why they weren’t online already.”

Michael didn’t have to propose new legislation or start a court fight. Instead, last year and in early 2023, he filed <a href="https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/31/" target=_blank>public records requests</a> under Maryland law seeking 90 years of death records that were previously unavailable outside the archives, all available marriage records and birth certificates older than 100 years.

This year, Maryland authorities released the documents to him, and Reclaim the Records announced last month that it had posted them online.

McCormick said the Maryland archives were easier to work with than agencies in other states, which sometimes resist public records requests.

“You feel more connected to something important,” he said of the newly available documents. “You just enjoy the sense of discovery. These records in particular are key.”

Brooke Schreier Ganz, the founder and president of Reclaim the Records, said she started the organization while trying to research ancestors in New York from her home in California. A young mother with two kids at home, she was unable to physically inspect the records housed a continent away, and no online option was available.

So she sued the New York City Municipal Archives in 2015 — and became “the first genealogist to force a recalcitrant archive to turn over records to the public,” she said.

“These records are funded by our taxpayer money,” Ganz said. “They’re about us. To have them locked away does not really help anybody.”

In an interview, Maryland State Archivist Elaine Rice Bachmann said the idea that the state’s records need to be “freed” is inaccurate. The records were always available for people to search using computers in the archives building in Annapolis, she said. If someone needed a copy of a record or a certification of a record, they could get it sent to them for a small fee.

State archivists have to be careful with public records, Bachmann said. Posting documents online en masse can lead to privacy violations or make it difficult to correct a record that is discovered to have an error. In addition, she said, the agency doesn’t have enough computer server space to make accessible the enormous number of public records generated over time.

Despite these considerations, Bachmann said, Maryland has one of the largest electronic archives in the nation, with more than 300 million images available for public access online from the archives building.

Making records truly accessible takes more than just uploading digital images, Bachmann said, and the archives staff is dedicated to providing authoritative information needed to make sense of them.

“We’re not here to withhold records,” she said. “We are here to make them accessible.”

Maryland is just the latest jurisdiction with its vital records online for free, according to Ganz, who said this information should not be controlled by giant companies such as Ancestry. In Pennsylvania, for example, that company — a for-profit Utah organization <a href="https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-completes-acquisition-of-ancestry-leading-online-family-history-business-for-4-7-billion/" target="_blank">purchased in 2020 for $4.7 billion</a> by private-equity <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/01/ancestry-genealogy-immigration/" target="_blank">giant Blackstone</a> — has intervened in a records dispute, arguing that the public records it scanned as part of an agreement with the state <a href="https://www.openrecords.pa.gov/Appeals/DocketGetFile.cfm?id=134389" target="_blank">are not public</a>.

Ancestry did not respond to requests for comment.

Courtesy Michael McCormick

Susan McCormick said the Maryland Motherlode has already yielded valuable family secrets.

For decades, according to McCormick, stories circulated about Frieda A. Whitehurst, the sister of McCormick’s grandfather who died around 1966. Whitehurst married four times, owned a bar and supposedly once threw one of her husbands out of a third-floor window. McCormick would scrutinize a blurry photo of Whitehurst and wonder whether the stories were true.

“She was gigantic,” McCormick said. “She was gorgeous. So I could see how that would be.”

Using the Maryland Motherlode, the McCormicks were able to confirm the identities of three of Whitehurst’s four husbands. Though the defenestration remains unconfirmed, the family knows just a little bit more about their ancestors.

“It’s just another page in the family history,” she said. “At least we have something to go on.”

Wesleyan University, BA in social science/music, 1998

Goucher College, MFA in creative nonfiction, 2014

Georgetown  University Law School, JD expected 2024

Justin Wm. Moyer is a reporter for The Washington Post. His work with a Post team covering the Capitol insurrection was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 2022, and his coverage of Saudi lobbying with a Post team was honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019.

Justin Wm. Moyer

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How genealogists got millions of Maryland records online for all to see

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Advocats for a change in making Maryland records accessible and online. 

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