Midwestern Deeds Online Update

In the five-state area of our focus, I now know of a total of five counties that have historical deeds on line. (Here's my original post on the subject from June.) These are all free sites. I've improved the linkage, and DeKalb is new!

Illinois

DeKalb County via FamilySearch (browseable with indexes)

Will County via Illinois Digital Archive (indexes only, surnames A-K only)

Ohio

Cuyahoga County via fiscal officer (searchable by book and page numbers only)

Stark County via recorder (sign up, archive search, first search index by letter, then deeds by book and page)

Wisconsin

Outagamie County via FamilySearch (browseable with indexes)


These are strictly deeds, the meat and potatoes of property research -- not patents, maps, plats, or tract books. (As far as I can tell, Ancestry has nothing at all in this category.) Surely there are more!


Harold Henderson, "Midwestern Deeds Online Update," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Midwestern Deeds On Line -- More or Less!

Finding local property transactions on line isn't easy. (I'm not talking about plat maps or lists of the first landowners, but the deeds and mortgages that record all buying and selling after that.)

Many county recorders have only recent records, say the last 10-60 years, on line -- and even this limited access seems tailored for the deep-pockets crowd. Some charge $5 per search or have subcontracted the access to places like countyrecords.com and landaccess.com. (I'm not opposed to paying for on-line convenience but that seems a little steep.) Genealogy-friendly on-line access seems rare, but it can't be as rare as my unsystematic searching has found!

FamilySearch has browseable deeds for two Midwestern counties:

* Outagamie County, Wisconsin (deeds 1867-1900, indexes 1870s-1957)

* Clay County, Minnesota (deeds 1825-1901 and later in a few books; grantee indexes 1879-1901, grantor 1839-1901)

In local initiatives:

* Will County, Illinois, has searchable grantor-grantee deed indexes 1836-1885, available through the Illinois Digital Archives (offering only surnames A-K in a user-unfriendly format) or through the Plainfield Public Library site Will County: Preserving History's Heritage (only very terse transcriptions of the index).

So far, the best I've found are in Ohio's Western Reserve, where direct free access to deeds of any age from:

* Cuyahoga County, Ohio's Fiscal Officer.

* Stark County, Ohio's Recorder. Complete a simple signup, sign in, and go to "archive search."

Sometimes the best solution is to go there. On line or off, it helps to be familiar with the many indexing systems used. (In Stark County the indexes are by first letter of surname, first letter of given name, and then chronological. There are good reasons for this but for the novice it can be challenging.)

But check around first and feel free to add to (or correct) this little list in the comments!

Harold Henderson, "Midwestern Deeds On Line -- More or Less!" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Northeastern Illinois county histories...

...digitized by Illinois Harvest recently. These are what we now call the "collar counties" of Chicago:

Portrait and Biographical Album of Will County, Illinois... (Chicago: Chapman Bros., 1890). 771 pages.

Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County, Illinois... (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Co., 1900). 628 pages.

History of Kendall County, Illinois, from the Earliest Discoveries to the Present Time (Aurora: Knickerbocker & Hodder, 1877), by Edmund Warne Hicks. 438 pages. Any ancestors of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert in here?

History of Kane County, Ill., Volumes 1 and 2, by R. Waite Joslyn (Chicago: The Pioneer Pub. Co., 1908).

History of McHenry County, Ill., Volumes 1 and 2 (Chicago: Munsell Pub. Co., 1922).