BlockBefore
Decorative drawing: a modest post office building with a flagpole. Not a photograph of this place.

Ohio

The archive covers 88 counties in Ohio so far. Everything below is a work of the United States government or a book published before 1929, and every page links to the record it came from.

Research this state

This curated hub for Ohio brings together the page's documented record links, visible map or image evidence where published, and routes to related local records.

What is documented here?

Use the page's provenance and linked records to distinguish the source material from the site's navigation and summaries.

How should I cite it?

Open the original record, preserve its repository and identifier, then use the citation tool for this page as a path back to the source.

Where should I go next?

Follow the county or state hub for related places and records, then use the guide for a source-aware research sequence.

Ohio within the United States

What the archive holds in Ohio

RecordsCount What it is
Settlements6,348Every populated place the Geographic Names Information System records, each with the survey sheets that cover it.
Topographic sheets103,425Sheet coverage counted per settlement, 1900 to 2002.
Township histories779Complete chapters from the county histories, reproduced unedited.
Listed properties3,294On the National Register of Historic Places.
Nomination case files0The full federal document that argued each property on to the register, machine-read from the scan.
Surveyed structures0Buildings and bridges recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record, with their written histories.
Businesses in the atlases3,710Read off the printed indexes of the fire insurance atlases. These names exist nowhere else as text.
Words of narrative33,741,049Public-domain county history, published complete.

Counties

88 of 88

All 88 counties in Ohio. Every county below has published records and opens its own page.

Map CountySettlements ListedNarrative
Adams County6312567,026 words
Allen County3926391,504 words
Ashland County32111,140,501 words
Ashtabula County1033656,186 words
Athens County10119489,372 words
Auglaize County362455,739 words
Belmont County11215658,157 words
Brown County6221345,331 words
Butler County15663924,238 words
Carroll County7911576,239 words
Champaign County3927372,950 words
Clark County118321,427,659 words
Clermont County1071520,217 words
Clinton County4211180,879 words
Columbiana County9435521,233 words
Coshocton County6516652,825 words
Crawford County3825392,743 words
Cuyahoga County21633883,334 words
Darke County8525404,352 words
Defiance County338647,072 words
Delaware County14849151,763 words
Erie County6017533,426 words
Fairfield County7029196,729 words
Fayette County4612329,720 words
Franklin County315295908,359 words
Fulton County496538,920 words
Gallia County9170 words
Geauga County5411444,848 words
Greene County4930243,173 words
Guernsey County891865,984 words
Hamilton County274314630,471 words
Hancock County4212633,287 words
Hardin County373191,178 words
Harrison County63592,937 words
Henry County30452,296 words
Highland County65140 words
Hocking County5970 words
Holmes County37130 words
Huron County4115384,388 words
Jackson County6410381,306 words
Jefferson County12917153,453 words
Knox County5835880,886 words
Lake County72750 words
Lawrence County11416221 words
Licking County8752880,617 words
Logan County456146,035 words
Lorain County631131,240,912 words
Lucas County8265353,554 words
Madison County487397,389 words
Mahoning County11159715,122 words
Marion County5214123,179 words
Medina County5927283,614 words
Meigs County8980 words
Mercer County592830,201 words
Miami County11036532,292 words
Monroe County76922,766 words
Montgomery County116117995,439 words
Morgan County51512,534 words
Morrow County3615410,474 words
Muskingum County13070244,107 words
Noble County588339,963 words
Ottawa County37210 words
Paulding County47316,022 words
Perry County7511225,614 words
Pickaway County7120794,908 words
Pike County62412,049 words
Portage County8742339,402 words
Preble County4816603,083 words
Putnam County507372,841 words
Richland County6361371,964 words
Ross County852235,095 words
Sandusky County5491,227,309 words
Scioto County883673,640 words
Seneca County51351,182,342 words
Shelby County4119501,668 words
Stark County189811,410,124 words
Summit County1801371,112,017 words
Trumbull County139325,186 words
Tuscarawas County8820154,635 words
Union County504516,512 words
Van Wert County297178,675 words
Vinton County396124,965 words
Warren County713070,124 words
Washington County12539499,180 words
Wayne County8718241,571 words
Williams County61462,869 words
Wood County16121430,763 words
Wyandot County258229,391 words

Read off the map

46 businesses

Every fire insurance atlas opens with a printed index naming the town's mills, tanneries and hotels by proprietor. Those names have never been text: they are ink on a scanned sheet, which is why no search engine has ever found them. We read them off the sheets and matched them across volumes, so a business surveyed four times appears once, with the years it survived and the line it was read from.

All 46 establishments named in the atlases of Washington County.

One town, every survey

1904 to 1994

The government mapped Marietta 6 times in 90 years and every sheet survives. Each opens its own entry, where the earliest and the latest can be wiped between.

What happened here

Three passages from the 1881 and 1902 county histories, written while people who remembered the events were alive.

From History of Washington County, Ohio, published 1881 - Independence Township

Thomas Simms And His Captivity

About 1810 a man arrived, of adventurous and eventful history. When Thomas Simms was a boy of some eight years of age, living with his kindred near Wheeling, Virginia, the Indians attacked and massacred his grandfather, and several of the family to which he belonged, but spared his life. They took Thomas to what was called Sandusky plains, where they raised him in the ways of their tribe.

Read the rest of this passage

From History of Washington County, Ohio, published 1881 - Newport Township

The Drowning Of Charles Haskell

The drowning of Charles Haskell is perhaps the most remarkable and the saddest case of this kind on record. Charles Haskell was, at the time of his tragic death, a respected citizen and a prominent member of the Baptist church. He resided near the river where he had his store. Saturday, July 23, 1831, he observed that some boats that he had secured to the Ohio shore were being blown by the wind towards the Virginia side.

Read the rest of this passage

From History of Washington County, Ohio, published 1881 - Belpre Township

The First Death

that occurred in the new settlement was that of Captain Zebulon King, who was assassinated by the Indians May 1, 1789. While busily engaged in clearing his lot in the middle settlement, he was shot and scalped, it is supposed by two Indians who had escaped from Fort Harmar, where they were confined by reason of their treacherous conduct towards the whites during the previous summer at Duncan's Falls.

Read the rest of this passage

What the county wrote about itself

499,180 words

Between 1881 and 1902 2 county and town histories were compiled here while the settlers' children were still alive to be asked. Every township has its own chapter. It is public domain, it has never been cut into pages a search can reach, and it is reproduced here in full: who arrived first, what they built, what it cost them.

All 22 townships chapters, or the 13 on Marietta.

Places that are gone

Some of what the surveys recorded no longer exists. 5 settlements in this county are marked historical in the federal gazetteer: the post office closed, the mine worked out, the road moved. The maps that recorded them did not go anywhere.

The vanished settlements of Washington County.

Where to start

Washington County, Ohio 39 listed properties, 125 settlements and 156 topographic sheets.
Businesses in the atlases 46 establishments read off the printed index sheets.
Marietta, Ohio Fire insurance atlases, photographs and the town's own chapters.
Putnam Street Bridge A surveyed crossing of the Muskingum River, one of four remaining swing bridges in Ohio.

Every settlement

125

Every named place in the county, each with the survey sheets that cover it and where it stands.

Every business named in the atlases

13

Read off the printed indexes of the fire insurance atlases. These names exist nowhere else as text.

Every listed property

39

Properties on the National Register of Historic Places, with the maps that show them.

Surveyed structures

2

Buildings and bridges recorded by the federal survey, with their written histories.

Settlements in Ohio

6,348 settlements

Named places, each with its own page of maps and records. They are listed on the page for the county that holds them, because that is where the rest of a town's record lives too. A place with no page is a place the archive has not reached yet, not a place that does not exist.

Every county in Ohio, each listing its own settlements.

Provenance

  • Boundaries. Census Bureau TIGERweb. A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
  • Place names. Geographic Names Information System, United States Geological Survey.
  • Counts. Computed from the records this site publishes, not quoted from anywhere. They change when the archive grows.