Family Search Adding Land Records

 The opening up of the land was the major reason for our pioneer ancestors to migrate into Ohio. OGS Trustee Cheryl Abernathy just sent out a Facebook note that her county land records were now online. We checked and, sure enough, FamilySearch has begun uploading deed and land record index images from Ohio County Recorder’s offices. We have found 37 counties represented this morning: Ashland, Ashtabula, Belmont, Carroll, Champaign, Clark, Clermont, Columbiana, Crawford, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Gallia, Geauga, Hamilton, Harrison, Holmes, Huron, Jefferson, Logan, Mahoning, Marion, Meigs, Monroe, Noble, Pickaway, Pike, Portage, Ross, Scioto, Trumbull, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Williams, Wyandot. All the deeds are online for some counties but many have just a couple volumes posted so far. Like the Ohio county tax records, they currently are accessible through the catalog. Go to FamilySearch.org and select Search, then Catalog. In the Place field, type in United States, Ohio, [name of county]. Click on Land and Property in their holdings outline. Choose the deeds from the Recorder’s Office. The film titles with a camera icon showing are the ones that have been scanned from the film (reel icon). I was taught to tackle land records first, because they establish a time frame for your family in a given county. They are also a good heir identification tool if there is no will. We are fortunate that so much is available now online for Ohio through FamilySearch, OGS, and other web sites. Have fun exploring Ohio’s land records!