More Online Ohio Deaths!

Collected in Joe Beine's Genealogy Roots Blog for the counties of Belmont, Columbiana, Geauga, Henry, Lorain, Stark, Summit, and Trumbull.

More Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

Ohio Records & Pioneer Families -- "locating and telling the stories of the men and women who were the first settlers of the state of Ohio" -- is supposed to be about pre-1860 Ohioans, but the second issue of 2008 offers some latitude. If you've been holding back on writing up your well-documented antebellum Ohioans, this would be a good time to get 'em done and send 'em off. I'm very fond of the auxiliary table of contents in the form of a county map of the state with counties shaded according to how much material they have in the given issue. Here's the gist:

"Betty's Diary: The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Nixon 1853-1867," contributed by Brent Morgan -- she was from Marietta

"A Short Biography of Robert Atkin," by Garland Hurst Pilliar -- Ashtabula County farmer

"Barton Sweet, Ohio Pioneer and Country Doctor," by Deobrah Gilbert & Mary Kay Townsend -- of Richland County, with children moving on to Michigan and Bureau County, Illinois. "No information on his parentage could be confirmed. Instead, the names of several inter-related families have been provided in hopes that these may offer clues..."

"Description of the Black Swamp," by B. R. Minton (1843), contributed by Terri Gorney -- there's a nice map, but basically think of a two-county-wide path from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Columbiana County, Ohio, 1858 Deaths," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters

"Columbiana County Taxes to Be Collected, 1806," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters -- from copies of Mss. 1134 Columbiana County Records 1803-1854 abstracted by Carol Bell and held at the Western Reserve Historical Society

"First Families of Ohio: The Early Years" (cont.), abstracted by Kay Ballantyne Hudson

"Revolutionary War Pension Application Abstracts" (cont.), abstracted by Lois Wheeler

"Official Register of Physicians by County, 1896, Wayne County"

"Merchants, Manufacturers & Traders of Ohio, 1885" (cont.)

"Record of the Douglass and Miller Families: Early Landowners in the Firelands," by Thomas Stephen Neel -- Huron and Erie counties

"Oh, the Stories Pictures Do Tell, submitted by Linda J. Hasting, on identifying some Greene County pictures of Wilberforce University students in the 1920s

"Dutch Families in Southwestern Ohio," by Harriet Foley -- including Conover, Barkalow, Lefferson, Monfort, Schenck, Stoutenborough, Vanderveer, Vandervort, Van Doren/Doorn, Van Dyke, Van Harlingen, and Van Horne

Ohio Genealogy News, Summer

If you're not a member of the largest state genealogy organization in the US, here's what you're missing in their magazine:

"Mahoning County Historical Society Archival Library," by Pamela L. Speis, which actually focuses on Trumbull and Columbiana counties as well. As always, a visit will be rewarded by finding unique local records -- for instance, the James Mackey collection. He was a surveyor in the Youngstown area 1849-1901.

"Synopsis of the Year 2007," by OGS Library Director Thomas Stephen Neel

"A Case of Mistaken Identity," by Martha Hamilton, one of the first-place winners in OGS's writing contest, who distinguishes two John Hamiltons in Gallia County.

"2008 OGS Conference a Success," by Kenny Burck, looking back on the April event in Cincinnati

Among the shorter notes, be advised that the Akron-Summit Public Library has made its 1940-2007 Akron Beacon-Journal obituary index available on line. Of course, if you actually go there you can view an obituary index going back another 99 years!

Vital records via newspaper

Last weekend the Youngstown Vindicator wrote up DeWayne McCarty's new compilation, Newspaper Abstracts From the Villages of Columbiana and East Lewistown, Ohio: ten years of work, 656 pages, covering births, marriages, and deaths in area small towns from 1870 to 1902.

If you're new to this, be sure to use these abstracts as a guide to finding the actual newspaper stories -- both to guard against error and to find additional material that may lurk in the original.

If you're old to this, you may have wondered if good traditional genealogical work of this kind is about to be superseded by some universal every-word-searchable digitized version of every newspaper that ever existed. I'm told by those who should know that it won't be, not any time soon. Thanks for keeping the faith, Mr. McCarty.