Society Saturday - Ohio History Connection

See newer post with updated links at: Ohio History Connection.

If you have ancestors from Ohio, be sure and check out the the Ohio History Connection. This is the online home of the archives at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. A few items I've found useful are:

Searchable databases - They have several databases searchable online including their online collections catalog, Ohio public records index, Ohio newspaper portal, and all volumes of the Ohio History Journal.

Ohio Public Records Index - Provides an index to Ohio death certificates and records for Ohio Industrial Schools searchable by name, county, and years. Names are spelled as they were entered into the index, so you may have to try variations. Only certain years are covered as stated on the main index page.

Online Collections Catalog - Searches their newspaper and state archives collections by keyword.

Newspaper index - This index lists their newspaper resources by county or city. Other documents available for the selected area are also provided in the search results.

Research guides - A set of research guides for help on researching specific record types.

Photocopy requests - Instructions on how to request photocopies of records in the archives. I had great success with this! I requested scans of microfilm images for a few issues of the Celina Democrat newspaper and received digital copies of the pages within a couple of days after making payment. Their email response was quick and very helpful and the quality of the scans was excellent.

This is just a sampling of what's available on their site. Thanks to the Ohio History Connection for providing such a valuable resource!

Note: "Flag of Ohio" image designed by John Eisenmann, SVG code by SiBr4 -  Licensed under Public Domain via Commons