Northwest Territory papers on line

Apparently the best way to browse the 551 items in the Indiana Historical Society's Northwest Territory collection is to go to their main web site, click on collections, and from the drop-down menu pick "digital image collections." On that page, click on the link in the sentence "You can search across all collections here."

Then select "Northwest Territory Collection, 1791-1825" and click add. If you want to browse, type "northwest" in the top bar of the search and your result will be 551 documents with tidy descriptions off to the right. There's a lot of military stuff, because the resident Indian tribes were not yet willing to give up their land.

There's also useful information if you're a Vertner or Kilgore researcher in the area: an order from a not clearly identified court for the sheriff of Ross County in the Ohio territory to seize "Nathan" (I read the name as Mathew) Kilgore's goods in order to collect a debt he owed Daniel Vertner, originally of $47 but now with interest and court costs ballooned to $65.

(You won't find these people in the census. There's little useful census information in Ohio for another twenty years.)

There doesn't seem to be a lot of context here, and I looked in vain for an overall description of the collection, or why it is labeled as it is, since it contains at least one document from 1764. More diligent visitors should feel free to enlighten me in the comments!

Hat tip to Region Roots from the Lake County (IN) Public Library.