Research Strategies
- Select a piece of property and visit the County Courthouse to learn its legal description and get the list of owners and dates.
- You may find it helpful to visit the site in person. What is there now?
- Find the property on a map. Use older maps to view the property in times past. What changes are evident?
- Learn some of the history of the general area. For example, city and county histories will give you useful background information.
- Learn about the people.
- City and county histories often include biographical information about individuals.
- Look for obituaries of property owners.
- Consult Probate Court records about wills, marriages, births.
- Check the Federal Census for the families.
- Check city and county directories for information about the people and indications of property use.
- Learn about the property.
- Check gazetteers for geographical and geological information.
- If your parcel was formerly part of a larger property, trace the owners and history of the larger parcel.
- Check reappraisement records for physical description of buildings on the property, over time. (You need the township and legal description of the property to do this)
- Review the list of other public records available, both at the Center for Archival Collections and at the Courthouse to fill in needed information.
External Resources
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Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps--City maps over time
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Wood County, Ohio Auditor--Property ownership information
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Ohio Obituary Index--information about lives of property owners
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Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880
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1912 Wood County Atlas via the Library of Congress
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"The Story of the Great Black Swamp" (a documentary)
Bibliography of Selected Print Sources
CAC:
pOG 1006 - Kaatz, Martin R. The Black Swamp: A Study in Historical Geogrpahy.
OG F 499.B72 B65 - Bowling Green Sesquicentennial Commission. Bowling Green, Ohio: A Sesquicentennial History, 1833-1983. Bowling Green: Sesquicentennial Commission, 1985. A contemporary history of the city from its beginnings.
pUA 1411 - Bowling Green State University. Land Inventory. Bowling Green, Ohio: BGSU, 1972. Lists land acquired by the university, date, from whom acquired, and legal description
pOG 3479 1994 - Burke, Thomas Aquinas. Ohio Lands: A Short History.[Columbus]: Ohio Auditor of State, n.d.
OG F 497.W8 C7 1897x - Commemorative, Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio: Its Past and Present, Early Settlement and Development...Biographies and Portraits of Early Settlers and Representative Citizens...Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1897. Separate every-name index available.
pOG 4289 - Deters, Morgan. The Rise of Bowling Green. Bowling Green, Ohio: Deters, 1996.
OG F497.W8 E8 - Evers, C. W. The Pioneer Scrap-Book of Wood County and the Maumee Valley. Bowling Green, 1909. Separate index available.
OG HD1775.O3 J66 1983 - Jones, Robert Leslie. History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983.
Main Library:
HD1761.G255 1968 - Gates, Paul Wallace. The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860. New York: Harper & Row, 1968
S521.5O3 G57 - Good, E. Howard. Black Swamp Farm. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1967
E101.N63 1997 - Nobles, Gregory H. American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest. New York: Hill & Wang, 1997
F499.B72 V2 - Van Tassel, Charles Sumner. The First One Hundred Years of Bowling Green, Ohio. Bowling Green, Ohio: Wood County News, 1932.
NW Depository:
GF41.R87 199 - Russell, Emily W. B. People and the Land through Time: Linking Ecology and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
HD191.S3 1964 - Sakolski, Aaron Morton. The Great American Land Bubble: the Amazing Story of Land-grabbing Speculations, and Booms from Colonial Days to the Present Time. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1932.
