Treasures at the Ohio Genealogical Society

 I have been spending quite a bit of time at the Ohio Genealogical Society lately.  It's a treasure that is actually just down the road from me -- about seven minutes away.

After it's humble beginnings at someone's home, it moved to two other properties before building its new home.  The dedication of this beautiful building was six years ago.  It is conveniently located off of a major interstate.

I have done some posts about OGS before, but this time I just want to show you some photos I took there yesterday.  It was a perfect way to spend a hot, humid, Ohio afternoon.

This is the interior of this beautiful library.  There are rows and rows of books about Ohio, and about the states touching Ohio.

This is the obituary collection that I wrote about.
Al and Julia Hoffman spent nearly two years digitizing these for FamilySearch.  

These are the vertical files containing a bounty of information on families.

A closeup of some of those vertical family files.

This file contains unpublished manuscripts about the counties and localities in Ohio.

The computer room is phenomenal, with the capability of scanning microfilm and downloading it to a flash drive.

They have a marvelous collection of both city and rural directories.
I wrote about these in an earlier post.  You can read it here.

This is only a portion of their yearbook collection.

This file contains family charts that people have sent in to add to the collection.
I made sure Mr. Kerry's family is well represented.

They even have a lending library!  These books are duplicates of those on the shelves.

Newspapers dating back to the mid-1800's are stored in a temperature-controlled archive room.

All of these beautiful volumes contain naturalization records that the state didn't want, or perhaps didn't have room for.

Here are a couple of pages from some original tax records.
These are also stored in the archive room.

The ORIGINAL 1880 census for the state of Ohio!
Yes, I said the original.
I was able to look at one of the volumes, and was amazed at the clarity of the writing.
It's interesting that I could read it so well, but if I were looking at it on microfilm, it might be faded out.

This is the manuscript collection.
Many times, when someone dies, the family members will donate their papers to a facility like OGS.
They are housed in archive-safe boxes.

These are collections waiting to be sorted through and placed in the archive room.

I tried real hard to rotate this, but it kept converting back.
It's just one snippet of one of the many German newspapers that are housed in the archive room.
There aren't many around that can read the old German, so they aren't looked at very often.

These are just a few of the treasures from OGS.  I will include a few more photos later.

Hope you enjoy!