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Property/Home/Land Records
What Are They?
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House/Land Deeds
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Atlases/Maps (Sanborn Maps)
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Phone/City Directories
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Probate Records
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Obituaries
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Land Sales/Transfers
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Court Records
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Auditor/Recorder Documents
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Tax Records
What CAN They Tell You?
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Addresses/Home Location
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Age of House/Property
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Owners/Renters/Heirs
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Prices of Home/Property
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Family Member Relationships
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Time frames of when Families Lived in Areas
Online Resources
How to Find Property Info in the History Room (THE BASICS)
VIA THE AUDITOR SITE:
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Go to the Ottawa County (or whatever Ohio County) Auditor Website
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Go to Search & Accept the Disclaimer
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Go to address and in the top box put the address # / 2nd box leave blank/ 3rd box put street name
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You can also search by current owners name (instead of going to address)
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It gives you the owner name and lot # and acreage—-Click on the PARCEL #
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This tells you a bit about the house and school district—if you click on RESIDENTIAL it will tell you the year the house was built and when any new constructions or remodels took place
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Click on all the tabs to learn more.
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It will tell you the list of owners, but only as far back as 2000.
—-> To go further, you need to tell them to go to the Ottawa County Recorders Office:
315 Madison Street
Room 204
Port Clinton, OH 43452
419-734-6730
The Recorders Office can tell them the property owners from the very beginning. Tell them to bring a list of names and we can research those people at the library
If the property is in Elmore proper (borders are the 51 bridge/Tina’s Carryout/Harrington Cemetery/Woodmore HS)—-then we do have some information on maps.
—> There is a map with lots and BLUE numbers.
It's in here with other good Elmore Maps/
House Info...
Those numbers correlate with index cards that are in order of those numbers. It tells you property owners and years. You can look at various Elmore maps to tell how the property changed over the years. There are index cards in the card catalog above this where you can look up the property via owner name.
What Other Records Can You Find Properties?
Both here next to OBIT shelf...
We have a database on our website under GENEALOGY that has SANBORN MAPS (for fire insurance). They are extremely helpful! You can use these for most cities.
There is also a RED BOOK (Atlas) with the 1874 and 1900 (combined) maps of Ottawa County. There are name indexes for both in the book (1874 in the middle and 1900 at the end). You can look up land in each township, property owner, acreage, and other things like schools, ditches, etc. These are for country areas (not inner city).
Combine that with an atlas on the shelf that is recent so you can compare and tell people what the street name the property is at now.
We have in the file cabinet under SUBJECTS some folders called “city name” REAL ESTATE (the Elmore ones are on the side of the cabinets) These tell you how the addresses changed in the 1970s and tell when people moved when it appeared in the newspaper.
Phone & City Directories are also a good way to find out where a person lived. Directories can be found in the online resources on ANCESTRY & FAMILY SEARCH or you can look in the History Room here....
We also have a section of Court Records specifically for land sales (search by index).
You can also check the OTTAWA COUNTY EXPONENT (or any newspaper) online in our GENEALOGY Databases to search for articles with people’s names.