Listers, For those who use maps and atlases in their genealogy research, I am happy to let you know I have recently finished an update to the Muskingum County OHGenWeb site that includes the 1875 Atlas (townships and towns) and the 1854 through 1915 Muskingum County Tax Maps. The Tax maps are for the years, 1854, 1875, 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1915. They are also available on the County Engineers web site but are all separate pages and are in Tiff format. The Tax Maps I have included are all those Tiffs collected and converted into PDFs that everyone should be able to download and read. Some are fairly large so make sure to watch your download icon to see when it is done. Clicking repeatedly will only start the download process over and take longer than just clicking once. The following link will take you right to the Maps page: http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohmuskin/maps.html If you have never used the tax map before, they are usually broken down by township quarters and many do not include any geographic features like roads so it helps to understand how the sections are laid out so referring to the Atlas maps will help. The Atlas maps also display the land owners so by using both the Tax and Atlas maps you should be able to determine where the land and owners are located. One thing the Tax Maps don't show is the heads of households as many families did not own the land they lived on but either leased or rented from the land owners. Also many land owners did not live on land they owned so if there is a question as to if they lived on the land, then another resource may be of help, Land Deeds. Many people are not aware that the Muskingum County Recorder has historical deeds available for viewing on their website. Current deeds can be searched and viewed from the basic search tool on their site at: http://cotthosting.com/ohmuskingum/LandRecords/protected/SrchQuickName.aspx There is another link called "Historical Indexes" at the top of that page that will take you to another search page where you can choose the type of file you want to search and the date range that the file covers. The 1803-1858 deed files are separated into Grantors and Grantees but the deed files after that have a choice to search Grantors or Grantees. There is also a section in the upper right hand corner to view the deed you have found in the index. You have to enter the book number and the page number but then you can view all the pages of the deed and download/print (in PDF format) one or all pages you select. Many deeds contain reference to the previous owner and the previous deed or deeds that conveyed title to the land. They may also reference Will Books or Mortgage books. The Will Books are not available on this site but many of the mortgage books are. There is a wealth of genealogical information that can be found in deeds as well as heirs, parents, siblings and spouses. They are well worth investigating especially if you are stuck. (FYI: Grantors are the people who conveyed the land, usually an owner but sometimes an executor or other person acting on behalf of the owner that could be unrelated like the Sheriff who may be selling the land do to default or seizure. The Grantee is the person acquiring the land, usually the land purchaser or an agent on their behalf.) I hope you will all find these additions to the Muskingum OHGenWeb site worth while and a help in your Muskingum research. Your Muskingum Admin, Denny Shirer - drdx@neo.rr.com - Canton, OH Shirer Family Genealogy - freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mysong Muskingum County, OHGenWeb - www.rootsweb.com/~ohmuskin/ Muskingum County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogy Society - www.mccogs.org