Department of Minutely Detailed Information in NW Indiana

Few things are more annoying to the time-challenged genealogist than a batch of big heavy index books in sequence with no dates on them. If that happens to be your predicament in the Lake County, Indiana, Recorder's office, and you're looking for a mortgage, I can help. The deed indexes are all nicely labeled, but mortgages are another matter. In the General Index of Mortgages there, roughly speaking,

Book 2 = 1878-1889
Book 3 = 1889-1896
Book 4 = 1896-1901
Book 5 = 1901-1905
Book 6 = 1906-1909
Book 7 = 1909-1911
Book 8 = 1911-1913
Book 9 = 1913-1915
Book 10 = 1915-1916
Book 11 = 1916-1918
Book 12 = 1918-1919
Book 13 = 1919-1920

(Book 1 was wedged so tightly into its slot that I didn't even try to dislodge it. Fortunately my research targets were post-1878.) I was mostly looking at the mortgagor books, not mortgagees, but Lake seems to like to keep the two sets of index books in similar date ranges.