Thanks, Shirley, I am going to give it a try. Dorothy [email protected] wrote: I guess I was more fortunate in Miami Co., OH. The lady in the courthouse went down in their basement and pulled the file on one of my g-grandmother's who was committed to Dayton State Hospital. This lady said only if I could prove my g-grandmother was deceased could I see the file. I told her I didn't have a copy of the death record with me but told her when the death occurred so she relented and let me see the file. I even made copies of a few pages but did it quickly since I didn't want to abuse this lady's kindness. This was in the early 1910s. Perhaps if you wrote directly to Judge Dixie Park at Stark County Probate, 110 Central Plaza, South, Suite 501, Canton, OH 44702-1413 and explained you are just trying to determine if this person was your relative, and if so, the cause, you might get a response. Judge Park is an exceptionally kind person and she might be able to assist you on a couple of questions. Shirley In a message dated 12/23/2005 7:04:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: In Summit Co., if you are talking about commitment due to mental illness, there is an index of these cases or dockets in the probate office, no matter how far back they go. When I inquired about seeing one of them, however, I was told that the records were sealed, although it was for someone who lived in the 1850's. Judith in OH -----Original Message----- From: dorothy boulware [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 2:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Sealed Court Records Hello, Someone just wrote concerning types of information posted on Stark Co. Probate Index, and mentioned marriages, deaths and even insanity commitments. My question is this: I tried to locate information on a civil commitment, and according to several typed pages distributed at the Stark Library, civil commitment records are held by the Akron Library. When I checked with the Akron Library, they had no idea where the records were. A spokesman at the library told me the commitment records were held by the Probate Court. The Stark Co. Probate Court advised me that all these type records are permanently sealed. The record that I was looking for was dated 1900. What options, do I have for identifying and determining if the person committed was my relative? Or, do I have any? Do sealed records ever have a time limit, in the state of Ohio? Thanks for any help, Dorothy ==== OHSTARK Mailing List ==== To receive the OHSTARK-L message board/gateway'd posts, click the following link: