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Westward
Ho!
Land and Tax Records: Ohio, 1787–1840
(CD 651)
Reviewed
by Marthe Arends
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The Westward Migration was an important part of the development
of the US — a fact no one will argue. That the records left
behind by the pioneers are worth their weight in gold to genealogists
is also something few will dispute. One of the most frequently
found types of records of the expansion of our country is land
records, and this CD contains information focusing specifically
on one of the public domain land states which played an important
role in the Westward Expansion: Ohio.
The introduction has a good, if brief, background in the history
of the Northwest Ordinance (which allowed territories to gain
enough settlers to petition for statehood), thus explaining the
reasoning behind public domain lands. The CD itself contains the
images of five volumes originally published by the Genealogical
Publishing Company:
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Early Ohio Settlers, Purchasers of Land in Southeastern
Ohio, 1800-1840 by Ellen T. Berry and David A Berry. This
volume contains information on approximately 7500 people who
purchased land through the Marietta Land Office.
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October
12, 2000
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Related Data on CD-ROM |
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Early Ohio Settlers, Purchasers of Land in Southwestern Ohio,
1800-1840 by Ellen T. Berry and David A Berry. This volume contains
information on approximately 25,000 individuals who purchased land
through the Cincinnati Land Office.
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Early Ohio Settlers, Purchasers of Land in East and East Central
Ohio, 1800-1840 by Ellen T. Berry and David A Berry. This volume
contains information on approximately 22,000 individuals who purchased
land through the Zanesville Land office, and the Steubenville Office
(for 1820-1840 only).
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Early Ohio Tax Records, Reprinted with 'The Index to Early Ohio
Tax Records' by Esther Weygandt Powell.This volume contains
a county-by-county list of Ohio settlers, and includes approximately
50,000 individuals.
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First Ownership of Ohio Lands by Albion M. Dyer. This volume
contains information on approximately 1000 individuals who purchased
land via the Ohio Company.
Typical information found in the volumes includes the name of the purchaser,
date of purchase, place of residence at the time of purchase, and a
description (range, township, and section) of the purchased land. The
following is an example of the information found in the volumes:
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T S
Purchaser Year Date Residence [Range,
Township, and Section]
Whitney, James 1835 July
24 Washington Co. 09 02 11
Benner, Adam
(Y)* 1825 March 02 ColumbanCoOh 05
18 33
*The (Y) indicates
the land office through which this purchase was sold
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My favorite volume of the five on this CD is Early Ohio
Tax Lists; the information found in that volume varies
greatly from the other four, but it serves as a wonderful
resource to fill in the missing parts between censuses.
This particular volume contains the 1801 tax list of the
Virginia Military District, lists of the original proprietors
and settlers, lists of Revolutionary War soldiers, lists
of resident proprietors, names of holders of military warrants,
names from voters' and householders' lists, and taxpayers
listed in various county tax rolls.
In browsing through the CD, I found a couple of instances
of poor transfer of material to the CD (such as page 255
of the Early Ohio Tax Lists, in which part of the
left hand side is missing, cutting off the first letter
in the individuals' last names), but for the most part,
browsing the CD is just the same as browsing the actual
books. All of the original materials — Introduction,
Notes, Maps, etc. — are included. This CD should go
a long way to helping researchers locate and further investigate
the public domain land records for Ohio. As with many of
the other Genealogy.com/GPC collaborations, this one has
excellent value for researchers, making available five detailed
land resources on one easily searched resource.
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Marthe Arends has
been involved in genealogy for 18 years. She has lectured on computers and genealogy
to many groups, has been the SysOp of a Fidonet genealogy BBS, has written articles
for a variety of genealogy publications, and currently writes fiction. Marthe has also written Genealogy
Software Guide and Genealogy
on CD-ROM, both published by the Genealogical
Publishing Company.
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