GENEALOGY RESEARCH BY EMAIL FROM THE STARK COUNTY DISTRICT LIBRARY
Thank you for your inquiry to the Genealogy Division of the Stark
County District Library in Canton, OH. The library has an excellent
collection which includes nearly all of the county's early courthouse
records, as well as many other sources for the area.
On request, the staff can search any of the indexed records for patrons
living outside Stark County. We answer our mail and e-mail in order of
receipt. Currently we receive an average of 150 to 200 requests for
research per month, so it may be a few weeks before you will receive a
response. Please be patient. If you have not heard back from us within
a month, please contact us again to be sure we received the request.
The library charges no fee for a search, but we do ask that you pay for
any copies made, as well as postage. Currently, copies are $.25 per
page for letter-size and $.50 per page for 11" x 17" paper. Paper size
is determined by the library. The staff will research your request and
send you any pertinent copies along with an invoice stating all charges.
To aid in our research, we ask that you follow a few simple guidelines:
1. Be sure to include your snail-mail address [regular postal address]
with all e-mail correspondence. Copies of records can not be sent
without it.
2. Make your requests as specific as possible. (i.e. a marriage,
census, death, probate, etc. for a specific person) As much as we
would like to, we simply can't answer the "anything-you-can-find"
requests on a person or surname.
3. Please limit your requests to 2 to 3 vital statistics, or one estate,
per e-mail.
4. Please give enough detail to facilitate finding the records you want
-full names of pertinent parties as well as the exact or approximate
date of the event. However, do not include so much that we get bogged
down in extraneous information.
5. Please include variant spelling of the names about which you are
inquiring. Also, if the name is pronounced differently than the
spelling would indicate, a phonetic spelling is most helpful.
Following is a list of the most requested Stark County records in our
collection. Any further restrictions, beyond those stated above, will
be included here.
VITAL RECORDS: Birth & Death 1867-1908 (both indexed); Marriage
1809-1986 (index 1809-1972).
PROBATE RECORDS: Original estate packets 1809-1920; index to all
estates, with or without wills, 1809-1914; index to estates with wills
1809-1986.
GUARDIANSHIPS: Original guardianship packets 1809-1923; index
1816-1900.
NATURALIZATIONS: 1809-1852 & 1861-1903 (all indexed). We don't have
all the Declarations of Intention from the late 1800s, but we do have
all the Final Naturalizations for the years stated.
LAND RECORDS: Deeds 1809-1894; Index to Deeds 1809-1916; Range Records
1809-1900. We can search for a specific deed if you supply us with an
approximate date, (within 5 or 10 years). We can't search for any/all
purchases and sales for a given person or surname.
MILITARY RECORDS: Stark County Veterans' Grave Registrations (indexed);
Revolutionary Veterans Buried in Stark County, OH (indexed); The
Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the
Rebellion (indexed, but still difficult to search, especially if
requesting a common name); D.A.R. Patriot Index; D.A.R. Honor Roll
(indexed); 1890 Ohio Union Veterans' and Widows' Census (Stark &
Tuscarawas Cos. indexed, the rest unindexed, arranged by county and then
twp., can search one twp. per letter).
CENSUS: Please indicate year and county of residence, as well as names
of family members at that time, if known. If county is not known, and
the name is too common, a search can not be made. The library has the
following census records:
1. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: 1800-1880, indices for 1800, 1820, 1860, &
1870.
2. KENTUCKY: 1800-1880 (all counties), indices through 1850.
3. MARYLAND: 1790-1880 (all counties), indices through 1850.
4. NEW YORK: 1790-1870 (all counties), indices through 1850, 1870 for
New York City and Long Island only.
5. OHIO: 1820-1920 (all counties), indices 1820-1860, scattered
counties for 1870, and 1880-1920.
6. PENNSYLVANIA: 1790-1880 (all counties), indices 1790-1860, 1870 only
partially indexed.
7. VIRGINIA: 1790, 1810-1880 (all counties), indices through 1870.
8. WEST VIRGINIA: 1870 & 1880 (all counties), indices for both years.
COUNTY HISTORIES: We have four Stark County histories with every-name
indices that date from 1881, 1896, 1904, and 1950.
ATLASES: Our Stark County atlases are from the years 1855, 1875, 1896,
and ca 1923. Only the 1875 is fully indexed. The others can possibly
be searched if you supply the township of residence.
CEMETERY RECORDS: The whole county has been copied. Pre-1900 has an
every-name index, post-1900 is surname-indexed only. We can search the
post-1900 records if surname is not a common one. If you can supply the
township of residence at death, it would help. If the name is too
common, please supply the name of the cemetery, otherwise a search can
not be made.
NEWSPAPERS: Only a small portion of the newspapers have been indexed.
Deaths and marriages from The Canton Repository have been indexed
1815-1834 and are in the process of being indexed further. Obituaries
only are indexed 1957 to the present. There are several other papers
for Canton, including some in German, but they are not indexed.
CITY DIRECTORIES: Canton City Directories 1859 & 1876 to the present;
Massillon City Directories 1859, 1880, 1915, 1927, 1942, and 1964 to the
present; Alliance City Directories for most years between 1916 and the
present. We can search these for a ten-year span per letter. City
Directories were not necessarily published every year--they can run
every 2 or 3 years.
As you can see, the Stark County District Library has quite an extensive
genealogy collection, and it is growing all the time. We also have
materials on the rest of Ohio as well as Kentucky, Maryland, New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia & West Virginia, however, we will not have as
complete a collection on these other areas as we have for Stark County.
If you have any questions about the collection, or would like to receive
research by e-mail, please don't hesitate to contact
--
Stark County District Library
715 Market Ave. North
Canton, OH 44702-1080
Phone: (330) 452-0665
Genealogy Web Page
Please include your postal address with all email correspondence. Thank
you.
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