Hamilton County Damaged Deeds

 

 

On March 31, 1884, the Hamilton County court house was destroyed by fire. Every attempt was made to get as many deed and other books out of the building. While many were saved, many sustained severe damage by burning and water in trying to contain the fire. Afterwards a heroic effort was made to transcribe what information survived by copying into replacement books. The best they could do was to copy verbatim the parts of the page as it was before the fire (see examples below). While a significant number of all deed books have been indexed and are available on this website on the -- HCRO Deed Indexes webpage, many were not indexed.

 

A project was started in 2020 by our society volunteers to provide buyer and seller indexes to those books without an index. The project was completed in September 2023. To create the indexes as fast as possible, in most cases, only the buyer and seller surnames were transcribed at first. However it became apparent that many deed book entries have to do with probate and lawsuits. If the "Qualifier" field is blank, this means the entry is a "typical deed" - a single owner (seller) transfer to a single buyer. Be aware the damage to an individual deed, mostly those at the front or rear of the original books, could be significant. If the person in the seller column is special commissioner, county official, executor or others as indicated in the Qualifier column, the record was reviewed in total as time permitted. Then additional information wasl added and additional rows with additional names to further describe the court actions or additional events as many of these entries continue over several years. See the following paragraph about court cases. 

 

Recorder's office access to these deed books:  https://recordersoffice.hamilton-co.org/hcro-pdi/doc-view/deed-book

NOTE:  On the above Recorder's Office page the "Deed Page" entry box is really for an image page number. Many of the deed books were microfilmed as 2 pages per image. Therefore if you have acquired a deed book page from the indexes below you will need to divide that by 2 and enter that result in the "Deed Page" box to get close to the book page needed.  Then you can page forward or back if necessary an image or two to find the actual book page desired.

 

 

In addition to individuals, partnerships or corporations, Executors, Administrators, Guardians or heirs may be sued or need a court decree to sell or transfer property. Or they may sue for non-performance of payments due an estate or a minor or unpaid taxes. The county Auditor, Sheriff or Commissioners may be appointed by the court as a Special or Master Commissioner. Those court cases involving property were also recorded in the deed books and list all the heirs, husbands and wives.

 

Typically deed book document headings have one name as seller and one as buyer. In this project, as time permitted, we included other surnames of those related to or connected to the indicated seller or buyer. Others mentioned such as notaries, judges, witnesses or appraisers will not be listed. So you need to use Ctrl-F to search all surnames in the index. These entries will be highlighted in the "Qualifier or type" column with the official's title (Sheriff., Auditor, Mast. Comm'r., Executor, Adminr., etc.) and/or "Super. Ct., "Com Pleas Ct.", "Probate Ct." There are over 4,000 court cases indicated so far. For more detail on the courts at the time of the record, and causes and officials you will see in the deed books, see the text in red in the Ohio court history and jurisdictions here.

 

Cincinnati Court Descriptions, judge Salmon P. Chase and developer Nicholas Longworth.

The estate and court related records have been extracted from the complete surname index below. They are sorted and arranged in deed book and page order so that all the entries with the same book and page number are together. Therefore you need to get the book and page numbers from the complete surname index below or click on "Court records in deed books 59 through 255" or "Court records in deed books 258 through 515" to get the PDF list and then do a Ctrl-F surname search to get to the person of interest.

 

  Court records in deed books 59 through 255 (as of 11/11/24)          Court records in deed books 258 through 515 (as of 5/17/24)