You may not want to hear this, but county histories aren't primary source material

We live in Baltimore, Maryland these days, but we are from Ohio, and my expertise is in Ohio.  Since I am a former President of the local historical society, I still hear from folks back home when they have local history questions.  Sometimes they like what I find, other times, they don't want to hear what I have to say.

Take "Georgia" (not her real name) who wrote me the other day and asked me if I would review her application for First Families of Marion County, Ohio, before she mailed it in.

I looked and then she and I had the talk about standards of proof needed to join an organization based on a tree.  She did not want to hear what I had to say, but she needed to hear it so we could get her research back on track.

First of all, the application needed a lot of work.  Secondly, the reason why it needed work was that "Georgia" based all of her research using two types of "research", census records and the four and a half county histories written for Marion County, Ohio, which are:

• The History of Marion County Ohio, 1883, Legget Conway & Company. 
• The History of Marion County Ohio and it's Representative Citizens, 1907, Wilbur Jacoby editor
• Biographies of Many Residents of Marion County, Ohio and Review of the History of Marion County, 1950, Sylvia Wilson and Ruth Wilson, editors.
• The Marion County 1979 History, 1979, Marion County Historical Society, Trella Romine, editor, AND the half history, 
• Portrait and Biographical History of Marion and Hardin Counties, Ohio, 1895. 

In her application, she had the census records, and she had snippets of biographies from the county histories.  Now the application is pretty clear as to what is acceptable and what is not as far as evidence. 

So what we discussed was why a county history doesn't cut it as primary source material.  The discussion started out like this:

Georgia: But the histories were written while these people were alive. 

Stuart: And they are in the histories because people paid for them to appear in the histories. 

Georgia: They did?

Stuart: Could that make them biased toward the subject? 
Georgia: A little...

And here is the fly in the ointment.  The majority of pre 1920 county histories done by companies like Legget Conway & Company were based on what the subjects wanted to be published.  County histories were not published based on potential sales, the were published on confirmed pre-sales, or what they used to call subscription, and paid for by the people whose biographies appeared in the pages of the books.  

There were, of course, notable gratis biographies published.  In the 1907 Jacoby history of Marion County, Warren G. Harding, publisher of the Marion Star, and the former Lieutenant Governor of Ohio was more than likely given standing with a free biography because he was a leader in the community.  But for the average business owner, or farmer, it was paid placement.  And to get a illustration in the books after 1890, that was an add on feature. 

We also know that companies like Legget Conway & Company employed writers who could write the subscriber's biography for a little bit more.  This is why their county histories read so consistently, county to county, state to state. 

So if the histories were paid for by the subscribers, what could go wrong?

Plenty.  

Spelling errors, typos, information about the past best not brought up, like that first wife, that child whose father was a scoundrel, that prison time for the fight in a bar, etc.

And in cases of more recent histories, the biographies are usually written and submitted by the subjects, and then they are published.  So if Uncle Oswald wrote what he thought was true, and didn't verify it, great grandpa Jones will show in the history biography as being born in Wales, when in fact he was born in Bad Axe, Michigan.  Again, things can go wrong, not intentionally.  

Well, I take that back.  Years ago a friend from another county in Ohio that was cleaning out and digitizing its archives from its 1970s county history project called me and told me that she found the original from a submitted biography claiming that the woman who wrote it was the direct descendant of Cleopatra.  

"There is a big red "X" through that paragraph," said Sandy.  

So what Georgia and I did was go through the histories and build a list of primary source records that she could find to verify, or disprove, what was contained in the county history.  This meant:

1) Finding birth records from 1867, the first year Ohio mandated the recording of births, but on a county record, to 1908. 

2) Find death records from 1867 through 1908 for the same reason and place. 

3) Death records from 1908 through 1963 on the state level, which are available online through family search for 1908-1953, and at the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society) for 1954-1963.  She could also visit the health department in Marion County to get records newer than 1963 if she needed to. 

4) Looking for property sale records at the County Recorders office, which is where Ohio's eighty-eight counties "record" the transfer of land.

I also sent her to the County Probate Court to look for wills, the Marion Public Library to look for more wills on microfilm - they have a reel of microfilm that survived a fire that took down one of the leading bank buildings in 1977.   

If Georgia can find birth, marriage, death and land purchases before 1850, she should make the cut.  

And if the primary source information she finds verifies what is in the county histories, then she has a great narrative to include as well. 

So county histories only count when you have verified them with real, honest to gosh primary source material.  And trust me - the real documents are always going to be better than what you read in a history because they tell you who your ancestors were.