Ohio Genealogy News Winter 2010

Pound for pound, quarter after quarter, Ohio Genealogy News is the most practically informative genealogy magazine I know of.

The current issue's cover story, "Ohioans in Religious Newspapers," is especially pertinent because so many of us have ancestors who came through Ohio, but something like it could be written for almost any state. But co-editor Deb Cyprych wrote it for Ohio, with descriptions and locations for periodicals associated with almost two dozen denominations: Baptist, Baptist (German), Christian Church (American Christian Convention), Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Church of God, Congregational, Episcopalian, Evangelical Association (German), Jewish, Lutheran, Lutheran (German), Mennonite, Methodist Episcopal, Methodist (German), Methodist Protestant, Presbyterian, Protestant Union, Reformed (German), Roman Catholic, Society of Friends (Quakers), United Brethren in Christ, and Universalist.

Other articles review the holdings of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, the website of the Terrace Park Building Survey (it's a village in Hamilton County), online Hamilton County probate records, and Palatines to America.

Ohio Genealogy News spring issue

OGS always has a lot going on:

"Ohio, the Gateway to the West: Genealogy Resources at the Columbus Metropolitan Library," by Russ Pollitt

"Ohio Death Certificate Images Online, 1908-1953," by Deb Cyprych

"2009 OGS Conference Call for Papers"

"Cemetery Chronicles," by Lolita (Thayer) Guthrie

"More Accessible Resources in the Cincinnati Public Library's Genealogy Department," by Patrician Van Skaik -- including an RSS feed, the River History Collection, "the leading African American research collection in the nation," and digitized Cincinnati city directories for many of the years 1819-1866.

Ohio libraries smackdown

The spring 2008 issue of Ohio Genealogy News pushes the upcoming annual conference (April 17-19 in Cincinnati) and describes the online images of state death certificates 1908-1953 now available, but most of the issue is devoted to three libraries: Columbus Metropolitan, Cincinnati Public, and new acquisitions by the Ohio Genealogical Society's own library in Mansfield (and the capital campaign to build a new one).

Columbus now holds the State Library of Ohio's genealogy collection as well as its own. (I should add that SLO still holds some relevant historical materials and the agricultural schedules of the US Census, as well as a very occasional genealogy blog.) Columbus also has the Ohio Huguenot Society collection and a microfilm every-name index to 130 Ohio county histories.

The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, long famed for the quality of its genealogy collection, has the River History Collection (including the Rivers photograph wiki), and what it describes as "the leading African American research collection in the nation, including Antebellum Southern Plantation Records, Regimental Histories of U.S. Colored Troops, and more. Its virtual library includes scanned images of Cincinnati city directories as early as 1819.

In short? It's hard to make a wrong turn in this state.