I'm sorry, but Roots Web does not and cannot support italics, color items, etc. Therefore, some things in here such as titles that should be in Italics ARE NOT and some that I put in color for emphasis ARE NOT. Hello and Good Day to all Morgan County researchers: This is addressed to anyone who wishes to read this general information about Morgan County. I was a charter member and have been a member of the Morgan County chapter of OGS since it was formed in the 1960's. The Historical Society and the Genealogical Society split and there are now two organizations. They split because the person who became president did not think history and genealogy "go together." IT IS LONG AND WILL TAKE A WHILE TO READ, BUT IT CERTAINLY WILL SAVE YOU TIME IF YOU KNOW THE LAWS OF OHIO about births, marriages and deaths in Ohio. 1. Morgan county has never had a fire in their courthouse, NEVER, EVER!!! The courthouse was built in 1886. That is taken from Development of Ohio's Counties and their Historic Courthouses published by the County Commissioners Association of Ohio. I don't know who told her that the adjoining building burned. The adjoining building is the County Jail. My cousin is the Sheriff, and my cousin is the Clerk of Courts, my cousin is The County Treasurer, and my cousin was the County Recorder. She retired this year. All four are different people. Therefore, I, like Dawn take exception to what the lady was told. I suspect the person that told her that, just plain did not know that there never was a fire and since they do not have the records before 1906 at the Board of Health, they thought they were destroyed. The records from 1906 to present are in the Board of Health, but prior to that are in the Archives in the beautiful County Courthouse. Further, as a professional researcher, I may take more than a year to get a reply to my clients, because I have a job just like everyone else. The VOLUNTEER there is an elderly woman and she is just that A VOLUNTEER. She has so many, (meaning several hundred) letters stacked up. She has a life like everyone else and cannot get to them in less than a few months. It may take more than a year before she gets to a letter. I wrote asking for something more than 20 months ago and she has not reply and I'm a close personal friend. What I need comes from her own school records. She is a retired school teacher with an avid interest in genealogy. 2. All of the records for Morgan County have been microfilmed from the beginning of the time the county was organized. THAT DOES NOT MEAN WHEN THE COUNTY WAS CREATED. The county was created on December 27, 1817, but NOT organized until 1820. Therefore, any mds. land records, etc. for 1818 through 1820 are in the original county. Morgan was created from Washington, Muskingum, Guernsey, and Athens. In 1845 two townships (Homer & Marion) were removed from Athens and added to Morgan. Also at various time small parts of Washington were added to Morgan In 1850 part of Manchester was removed from Morgan to create Noble. My Source is Randolph C. Downes book, Evolution of Ohio County Boundaries. All of those microfilm records can be borrowed from the Family History Library in SLC through your local Family History Center in Lancaster or Logan Ohio. There is also one in Zanesville and in Columbus. The person making the original comments says she has waited for 5 months, she is handicapped and has a difficult time getting around, thus she cannot get to Columbus, etc. I'm a disabled veteran from Korea, so I understand her problem, and I can relate to her problem, but I still manage to get where I need to go, even though others may get there before I do. I'm a professor at a university library with over 4 million books. We receive email requests, private mail requests, phone call requests, and people at the desk. It may take over a year to get some of them answered even with a staff of over 50. It is a VERY VERY TIME consuming process to do research. Just finding one birth certificate may take 2-3 hours, a will may take 5-6 hours, and land records are extremely time consuming. This is because it takes time to find the book or reel of film, then find the record in the book, etc. Of course, they go to different researchers and when it comes to the "top of their pile" so to speak then it gets a reply. I finished photocopying a request for extremely brittle, old newspapers, on Friday. It has been in my "request file" for months and came from Canada via email more than one year ago. Therefore, I suggest being patient. Ruth will get to it eventually. When Ruth passes away, there will be no one in Morgan County at all. The Clerk of Court has all that she and her staff can do to keep up with the cases in the court today and tomorrow; the criminal and civil cases, the wills being admitted, the wills submitted for probate, etc. It is a very time consuming job to keep up with the current cases. They have no time at all to go up to the Archives on level two, which is across from the Engineers Office, to get to the materials, they just DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF TIME. That is why they rely on Ruth but further they rely on the LDS Family History Centers to provide us researchers with copies of their records. Further, Morgan is one of the poorest counties in the state. They do not even have email, --I'm sure that is a blessing and a curse-- so that is also part of the problem. 3. Birth records for OHIO: Began in 1867, but were not very well kept --meaning they were not reported to the Clerk of the Probate Court-- for about 20 years thereafter. If you are in a large city (the three C's) some clerks began in 1865 as a trial, but very very few were kept in 1866. By state law state all counties were to begin in 1867. Vol. one of the Birth Records is being printed in the chapter newsletter published quarterly. 4. Death records for OHIO: Began in 1867, but again, at first, they were not very well kept. They law states the clerk did NOT have to record the names of the parents of the deceased UNLESS it was a child under the age of one. Again, if you are researching in a big city (the three C's) some clerks began in 1865 as a trial, but very very few were kept in 1866. They have not been published anywhere at the present moment. 5. Marriage records for OHIO: Began at the county level at the time the county was organized, thus Washington and Hamilton counties have the earliest marriage records. Those counties were created in 1790 by Arthur St. Clair, the Governor of the Old Northwest Territory. Morgan County marriage records begin in 1820 WHEN THE COUNTY WAS ORGANIZED. Until about 1880 & that is a very rough date, the clerk recorded what was turned in by the officiator; JP, MG, or PJ. Justice of the Peace, Minister of the Gospel, and Probate Judge. The information required was A. The names of the couple, B. The date of the ceremony C. The name of the officiator & his title. If the bride was under age, the parents or guardian had to sign for her to be married and that is sometimes included in the record book. Sometimes the person signing was the brother of the bride and it would so state. In the 1880's a new form was created, which required the name of both people, their age, date of birth, place of birth, parents names including the maiden name of the mother, residence of both, and occupation of both. That was the application. Then the license was issued to them permitting them to get married. If it was returned then it was recorded by the clerk that they were IN FACT married. If it was not returned then you have an application but it does not say when they were married or by whom. The application BY STATE LAW had to be made in the BRIDE'S county of residence. In 1949, a statewide index of all marriages was begun. HOWEVER, ALL MARRIAGES FOR OHIO FROM 1875 BACK TO THE settlement at Marietta and Losantiville (now Cincinnati) are on the IGI, except Quaker Marriages or if the marriage was performed by BANNS. Banns are not commonly used in the 19th century, but occasionally they were used at a Catholic marriage. I do not think Banns were used in any Protestant Marriage at that time in the USA. Members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) do not look at marriage the way others do. They consider it a contract, therefore, they do not record it in the county records. You must look in the minutes of the monthly meeting. Chesterhill in Southern Morgan County, is an excellent example of a Quaker settlement. There is still a monthly meeting there. The records were recently found in upstate New York, when they were turned in. The "secretary" of the Chesterhill Monthly Meeting had moved to New York and took them with him. They have the marriages and the minutes of the men's meeting and the women's meeting. The marriage will record the name of every person present at the marriage. I believe they have been microfilmed and are available at the Ohio Historical Society, but I do not think the Family History Library in Salt Lake City has them. ALL OF THE MARRIAGES HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED BY THE CHAPTER AND CAN BE PURCHASED from them. Some of you may ask why they are not online. First and foremost, first and foremost is because the published records are a major source of income to keep the chapter running. That is why they are not online. Anyone trying to put them online would run into a hornets nest of copyright violation in the blink of an eye. Now finally, as the Archivist from Arizona said, it is very time consuming. Let me give you an example. If all the books that are awaiting cataloging in the Library of Congress --especially genealogies-- were assigned immediately to catalogers AND NOT ONE MORE GENEALOGY not one more was written for the next 20 years, not one more was written for the next 20 years, the catalogers would not be caught up. They would still not have all of the books awaiting cataloging finished, the backlog is that bad. At our university, we estimate all of the catalogers will be retired before we can catalog just the sheet music collection that has been donated to us. It is just that huge, and we have 5 professionals working on it each day of the week. Of course they are doing copy cataloging online, they are not doing original cataloging unless the piece has never been cataloged at any library online. Of course, that presupposes that not one more piece of sheet music, not one more CD Rom, not one more tape recording, not any music collections at all will be purchased or donated and not one person will walk in the library and want our assistance in trying to find something, it will take us 20 years to catalog it. Now that is a terrible thing to admit, but every archive, every library, every keeper of books, including local historical societies like Fairfield County and the Fairfield County Public library which is where the lady lives that started this whole thing and caused me --and others-- to take time to reply. I'm not begrudging it, I'm just saying this has taken me about three hours two compile and get it the way I want it, and even at that I'm not sure it is exactly the way I want it. It may be toooooo harsh, but it states it like it is. Just one last thing. This is not going to impact anyone reading this, but the archives of the Ottoman Empire are scattered all over present day Turkey. The Family History Library figures it will take more than 100 years to get them microfilmed and cataloged, and that is only Turkey. What about Russia, Ukraine, the other former Soviet Republics, The People's Republic of China, India, and a raft of other smaller nations in the world where genealogical records are stored? I'm not talking about going back one thousand years --although all of wish we could get back just that far and some of us truly wish we could just figure out who our great grandparents were-- I'm talking about the records of the former Soviet Union before it became the Soviet Union when it was Czarist Russia in the 18th century. There are many people in the USA who have roots in Russia in the 18th century. Fiddler on the Roof is a very very good example of that. At the end of the movie, where did they move? THE GOOD OLD USA! Mr. K. Haybron Adams Associate Professor of Library Science President emeritus of the Utah County Chapter of Utah Genealogical Association Brigham Young University Provo, Utah 84602

I though I knew a bit about Morgan County, but Professor Adams has shown me how little I really know about the County's history, I bow out of this debate. I think a person could make a fair living doing research for people into the Morgan County records. Many of the book's leather backs were falling apart in 1959, we did temp. repairs with duct tape (may have been masking tape) to hold them together. I was taught how to read the first pages to discover the title and I printed it on the binder with a pen, then we separated them into boxes (groups) and they were moved to be micro-filmed. When they were returned, some were put onto shelves, many in piles and folks have been digging through then every since. When I went back to research them in 1998, the Probate Judge took the time to show me the room were they stored on the 2nd floor. I would then carry the book back to the first floor, Clerk of Court, I think, and they would make copies for me. I believe the land records were in basement, and they made copies for me there. I know the two days that I went through the process was tiring for me, and no doubt they were glad when I left; but I must say that everyone was civil, and for the most part hid their feelings when they had to stop their real work to help me. Bless Ruth for her labor of love and god help us when her candle goes out! Dave Pickenpaugh - Marblemount, WA pickenpaugh@bigfoot.com