Erie County, Ohio Genealogical Records Information

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Erie County History and Information

Erie County Facts

Erie County was created on March 15, 1838 and was formed from Huron and Sandusky Counties. The County was named for the Erie Indians, whose name was their word for "cat", but who lived in New York State. Sandusky is the county seat of Erie County, Ohio. “Sandusky” means “at the cold water” in Wyandot. Founded in 1817, Sandusky originally was called Portland. In 1838, the Ohio government created Erie County and established Sandusky as the county seat. See also County History for more historical details.

The Health Department has Birth & Death Records from 1908-Present, see the Vital Records section for more details. For birth and death records prior to Dec. 20, 1908, contact the Probate Court of this county.

Counties adjacent to Erie County are the province of Ontario, Canada (north), Lorain County (east), Huron County (south), Sandusky County (west), Ottawa County (northwest).

Erie County Municipalities Include Bellevue, Huron, Sandusky, Vermilion, Bay View, Berlin Heights, Castalia, Kelleys Island, Milan. Townships Include Berlin, Florence, Groton, Huron, Margaretta, Milan, Oxford, Perkins, Vermilion. Other localities Include Avery, Birmingham

The Erie County Official Government Website
Search the Ohio USGenWeb Archives
Erie County, Virginia History Books at Amazon.com
Family History Library - The largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world.

There are free downloadable and printable forms to help with your research. These include U.S. Census Extraction Forms, U.K. Census Extraction Forms, Research Calendar, Ancestral Chart, Research Extract, Correspondence Record , Family Group Sheet , Source Summary Form.

Records at the Erie County Courthouse

PLEASE READ!! Please call the clerk's department to confirm hours, mailing address, fees and other specifics before visiting or requesting information because of sometimes changing contact information.

All Departments below are in the Erie County Courthouse 323 Columbus Ave., Sandusky 44870, (419) 627-7705, unless otherwise noted below. The Official County website is located at http://www.erie-county-ohio.net/ . NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.

Erie County Clerk of Probate Court has Marriage Records from 1838, Birth / Death Records from 1851 and Probate Records from 1838 . Phone Number: 419-627-7750
The Probate Court handles the following administrative functions: the probating of wills, estate administrations (full estates and releases from administration), trusts, guardianships of incompetent adults and minors, commitment hearings for the mentally ill and mentally challenged, adoptions, birth corrections, name changes, delayed birth registrations, custodial accounts, lost heir accounts, order disinterments, and issues marriage licenses. In addition, the Court tries litigation issues in all the above matters. A unique aspect of the Probate Court is that the Probate Judge is the ex-officio Clerk of Courts, thus, the Court performs all the duties as its own Clerk of Courts (indexing, filing, docketing, etc.).

Erie County Recorder has Land Records from 1837 and is located at 247 Columbus Avenue, Sandusky, OH 44870; Phone: (419) 627-7686
In Ohio, the Recorder, as an elected official, is charged by law with the exacting duty of keeping certain specific records which may include: deeds, mortgages, financing statements, easements, leases, federal tax liens, personal tax liens, military discharges, powers of attorney, mechanics liens, plats, recognizance liens, partnerships, living wills, zoning resolutions, etc.

Erie County Clerk of Court of Common Pleas has Court Records from 1838. (419) 627-7705 General Information
The Clerk of Courts of Common Pleas is responsible for various administrative and ministerial duties in conjunction with the Court of Common Pleas. These duties include filing, docketing, indexing, and preserving all court pleadings for civil, felony criminal and domestic relations cases. The Clerk of Courts must also follow procedure required by law and issues writs to carry out Court orders. Some of these writs include summons, subpoenas, warrants to arrest and to convey to penal institutions, and signing the death warrant in capital cases. The Clerk is responsible for the receipt and disbursement of all money paid into the court system. Other services provided by the Clerk of Court of Common Pleas are accepting bonds, recording notary commissions, administering oaths, keeping naturalization records, and recording and retention of coroner records.

There are a few online databases for Court, Land and Probate Records which include:Ohio Land Records and Ohio Early Land Ownership Records.

Click Here to Search Ohio Court, Land, Wills & Financial Records! - Researchers often overlook the importance of court records, probate records, and land records as a source of family history information.

Below is a list of online resources for Erie County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Erie County Court Records by clicking the link below:

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Ohio Marriages: Extracted from the Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly
Ohio Marriages, 1803-1900: This database contains records of marriages that took place in Ohio between 1803 and 1900.
Erie County, Ohio Court Books at Amazon.com
Ohio Immigration & Emigration Records - Immigration records help the family historian to understand the movements of their ancestry as they relocated to different parts of the world.

Erie County Vital Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Tax records for Ohio began as early as 1800. The archives section of the Ohio Historical Society has a collection of original Ohio tax lists from the state auditor's office. They include lists from the county's organization to 1838, usually arranged by county and township. They are not indexed. County courthouses hold various tax records that have not been inventoried. They are in the office of the county auditor or the county records manager. The FHL has microfilm copies of all known extant tax records 1800-38 for Ohio.

The National Archives-Great Lakes Region retains numerous federal tax records for Ohio. These include assessment books for 1867-73 and corporate and personal records for District 10, Toledo, and District 11, Columbus.

Below is a list of online resources for Erie County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Erie County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Erie County, Ohio Tax Books at Amazon.com

Erie County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Ohio Genealogical Addresses

The Repositories in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be more generalized and over look the smaller details that local societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy section and may have some resources that are not located at archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All these places are vitally important to the family genealogist and must not be passed over.

Below is a list of online resources for Erie County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Erie County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

Erie County Chapter, OGS, PO Box 1301, Sandusky, OH 44871-1301; meets at the Zion Lutheran Church on the third Monday of each month during March, April, May, September, October, and November with an annual cemetery picnic in June.
Local Ohio Researchers, Find a local researcher or become a local researcher.
Ohio Historical Society, Archives-Library Division,1982 Velma Avenue, Columbus, OH 43211; Telephone: 614-297-2300
The Ohio Historical Society Archives/Library is, by law, the archives for the State of Ohio. As such, we collect, preserve, and make available to the public, documents pertaining to the operation of state and local governments.
Ohio Genealogical Society, 713 S. Main St, Mansfield, OH 44907-1644;(419) 756-7294, [EMAIL]
Columbus Metropolitan Library, Genealogy Division, 96 S. Grant Ave., Columbus, OH 43215. 614-645-2ASK (2275);The Genealogy Division holds microfilm; printed, typescript, and manuscript collections, including family and local histories; atlases; cemetery records; city directories; military records; censuses and census indexes; and transcribed records provided by the Ohio chapters of the DAR.
Ohio Newspapers & Periodicals Records - Newspapers and periodicals are the diaries of local communities. They are excellent sources of family history details - often recorded nowhere else. Look for obituaries, marriages, legal notices, and more found in our Historical Newspaper Archives.
Ohio Genealogical Society Books at Amazon.com

Erie County Church & Cemeteries

Click Here to Search Ohio Obituary Records! - This database is a compilation of obituaries published in U.S. newspapers, collected from various online sources. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.

There are many churches and cemeteries in Erie County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Erie County Tombstone Transcription Project.

Religion in Ohio was an early and important factor in settlement. The first Moravian mission was established in 1772. Presbyterians and Quakers were in the state at an early date, the latter having established forty-three monthly meetings and settlements between 1801 and 1883. The Presbyterians founded seventeen towns between 1784 and 1799. Baptists, Congregationalists, several reformed groups, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, United Brethren, Methodists, and Catholics arrived prior to 1850. By 1890 the latter two denominations were the largest in the state. The Methodist circuit in Ohio was organized in 1798, with circuit riders traveling from log cabins to camp meetings across the territory. In 1831 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints migrated from New York to Kirtland in Lake County. No thorough survey exists of any of the holdings of individual churches in Ohio, although many are on microfilm through the FHL. The Ohio Genealogical Society is presently undertaking a church records survey.

According to the Ohio Genealogical Society, the majority of Ohio counties have published cemetery records in one form or another. They suggest contacting local societies or one of the major genealogical libraries in the state.

Below is a list of online resources for Erie County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Erie County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:

Ohio Cemetery Records: Extracted from the Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly
Erie County, Ohio Cemetery Books at Amazon.com
Erie County, Ohio Church Books at Amazon.com

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Click Here to Search Ohio Family Tree Records! - The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.

When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Erie County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Erie County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Sites on USGenweb: [ Erie County ] [ Ohio ] [ Main Page ]
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The OHGenWeb Project Ohio Research Exchange Program
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Ohio Family & Local History Records - The Family & Local Histories Collection lets you read journals, memoirs, and other first-hand historical narratives right on your computer. Gathered from some of the world's finest libraries, these materials may provide hard-to-find town, county, and state information; tax records and wills; military, church, and court records; as well as photographs, stories, and maps.
Genealogical Document Search and Retrieval Service
Erie County, Ohio Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

On March 15, 1838, the Ohio government authorized the creation of Erie County. The county was originally parts of Huron and Sandusky Counties. Residents named the county after the Erie Indians. The county was originally a portion of the Connecticut Western Reserve and was part of the Fire Lands. Located on Lake Erie, the county and its residents played an important role in the Underground Railroad during the first part of the nineteenth century. Residents commonly ferried runaway slaves across Lake Erie to Canada. Sandusky and Huron were once busy ports, allowing Ohio farmers and businesses to ship their products all over the world.

Erie County is located in the north-central portion of Ohio. The county seat is Sandusky, which is the county’s largest population center, with almost twenty-eight thousand residents in 2000. The county’s next largest community is Huron, with a population of approximately eight thousand people in 2000. The county experienced almost a four percent increase in population between 1990 and 2000, raising the number of residents to 79,551 people. An average of 312 people live in each of Erie County’s 255 square miles.

Erie County is heavily rural, with urban areas comprising six percent of the county’s land mass. Most residents find employment in service industries, with manufacturing establishments and sales positions coming in second and third respectively. The county is a major tourist destination, with Cedar Point Amusement Park residing within its borders. Lake Erie also attracts a large number of visitors, who participate in boating and fishing. The Ohio Historical Society also operates two sites in the county, Inscription Rock, where Indians left pictographs, and Glacial Grooves, which provides visitors with the opportunity to see gouges made by glaciers. The county’s average income was approximately twenty-eight thousand dollars per person in 1999, with just over nine percent of the population living in poverty.

Sandusky is the county seat of Erie County, Ohio. “Sandusky” means “at the cold water” in Wyandot. Founded in 1817, Sandusky originally was called Portland. In 1838, the Ohio government created Erie County and established Sandusky as the county seat.

Sandusky grew quickly. By 1846, approximately three thousand people resided in the town. Two railroads served the community, and it was an important harbor on Lake Erie, making Sandusky an important economic center. In 1846, Sandusky merchants exported 843,746 bushels of wheat. The town consisted of numerous stores, two printing offices, two machine shops, two banks, six churches, one high school, and several iron furnaces. During the 1840s and 1850s, Sandusky also was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, with many residents assisting runaway slaves in their search for freedom by transporting the African Americans to Canada.

By 1880, Sandusky’s population had reached almost sixteen thousand residents. This much larger population resulted in an increasing number of social institutions, including twenty churches and three newspapers. The community also became more economically diverse, with at least twenty-nine businesses with ten or more employees. Among the items that Sandusky businesses produced were lime, railroad locomotives and cars, carriages, wheels, crayons, chalk, beer, paper, baskets, and tools. In 1886, residents boasted that they were the leading manufacturers of wooden wheels in the United States. That same year, Sandusky was home to the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home and the Ohio State Fish Hatchery.

With the dawn of the twentieth century and the advent of automobiles and trucks, Sandusky’s importance as a shipping center declined. Today, the city boasts approximately twenty-eight thousand residents. Many of these people find employment in tourism, including working at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky. A fishing industry, which had existed since the nineteenth century, continues to flourish today. Sandusky officials claim that their city is the “largest fresh water fish market in the world.”

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