Lake County Ohio GenWeb

About the
Probate Birth Records Index

Skip to the index

On this Page:

Introduction:

Birth records were mandated in the state of Ohio in 1867. Probate Court was required to record the births and deaths as reported. Births and deaths were reported by the tax assessors, physicians, parents, etc. After December 20, 1908 the Department of Health took over this function. In Lake County Probate Court research room (Marriage department). There are two volumes of birth and death records, each volume has births on one side of the book, and when turned over, deaths on the other side. There is a card index near the volumes.

This database is an alphabetical near-transcription to the original records, proofread and made as close to the original as possible. This transcription includes, where available, the volume, page number, child's name, date of birth, father's name and mother's name, parents' residence, place of birth, and by whom reported. One major difference from a true transcription is that the names have been reversed for the child, so that it will alphabetize. Addtionally words like "no name" "unnamed" "baby" etc. were deleted so that the unnamed children will all appear at the beginning of the surname listing rather than to be alphabetzed in different positions. In the case where there was no name mentioned at all, we have used the surname of the father if available, or of the mother if the father was not listed.

Another difference from a true tanscription is that where there were ditto marks or blanks, the antecedent entry or intended antecedent was used. This was done because the records are out of order, so it is not reasonable to find what the ditto marks referred to. In some cases, there was nothing actually written there, but it was apparent that the heading to a section applied to all the records in the section.

The original spanned two ledger sized pages. It is presented here to print on 8 1/2 X 11" paper.

Dates covered in Volumes:

Vol 1 covers births from 1867 through March 31, 1895.

Vol 2 covers births from April 1, 1895 through 1908.

Numbering Systems:

            There were three numbering systems in use at various times. In order, they were:

1.         Volume 1 pages 2-71:

The court used consecutive numbering from first birth recorded in 1867 on page 2 through the middle of page 70, birth # 1462, in the 1875/76 period.

2.         Volume 1 page 64, start of Painesville Twp., 1873/74:

The court began numbering each township separately, starting with ‘1' at the beginning of each recording year. [Note that this overlaps the consecutive numbering, above; both were used on pages 64 - 71.] Numbering by township continues until March, 1893 (Vol. 1, top of page 268.)

3.         Volume 1 page 268:

Beginning April, 1893, numbering is by year for the entire county, rather than by township. That is, the first birth recorded for the year in Lake County is numbered one, and numbering increases until the beginning of the next year. There is no longer separate numbering for each township. This system continued through the end of Vol. 2.

About Corrections:

Errors happen. Corrections to the birth records were made in these ledgers, usually in red ink. They usually started with a reference to the Civil Docket entry authorizing the changes in the wider “Date Entered” column. The errors were crossed off by a single line, and the correction(s) entered where space permitted.

To show these corrections, the following procedure is used:

• Erroneous information is presented in “strikeout” (like this) text.

• Everything entered during the correction is written in italics; this includes the reference to the Civil Docket.

• New lines in the original record are represented by a forward slash followed by a space: /

As an example, consider these selected items from a hypothetical record:

The first column is the reference to the Civil Docket entry where the court approved the correction (Volume 4, page 999, fourth entry (D) on the page). There are two ‘/ ’ strings in this column; they indicate that the entry in the ledger is more like:

(This three-line formatting of the docket reference is by far the most common.)

The second shows that the child had no given name in the original entry (‘Baby’), and this was crossed off and changed to ‘John Q.’

The third column expands the initials ‘J. N.’ to ‘John Nance’.

In the fourth column, the ‘Harbor’ was added to Fairport. (At the turn of the 20^th Century, the town was known as Fairport, rather than Fairport Harbor.)

Additional corrections and additions of records which are not necessarily found in these volumes (or this transcription) are found with Corrected and Delayed Birth Index under Vital Records.

Miscellanea:

Early Omissions in Data

Volume 1, through about page 13, was hit or miss as far as Birth Place and Residence of Parents.

Information in Square Brackets []

Items in square brackets [ ] are editorial comments. This includes:

• [sic] = “This may not be right, but it’s what was written.”

• Missing information - most often Place of Birth, where a block of data was headed by a township name, but state, county, township was missing, as in [Ohio] [Lake] [Kirtland].

• Alternate spellings of names when we were really not sure what was written.

• Corrections made without Civil Docket entries - usually made in pencil; we’re not sure whether these corrections were made by the court personnel or by members of the public viewing the records.

• Indication of [twin]s or [triplet]s - alphabetizing can separate these siblings in the list. This indication was done when we noticed the same surname and birth date, but we have almost certainly missed some.

• Other comments

Data denoted with ‘*’ or ‘#’

There are a few references marked with ‘*’ or ‘#’ which match other statements, in italics, in some records. In these cases, the statements in italics were written in the ledger on a separate line, on the same page. We squeezed them into the relevant record so they would not be orphaned when we alphabetized these records.

Microfilm and Online Records:

Acknowledgments:

Links to the Birth Records

NOTE that the first column, with the initial, links to the first data file for that initial. ("A" is the file containing the records for Surnames starting with A... through Alk... .)

A	All	Andr	Arn
B	Bak	Bar	Barre	Bat	Bee	Bern	Blackm
	Boo	Brai	Brewst	Broo	Brow	Brus	Burnet
C	Cam	Carp	Cart	Champ	Chat	Clar	Co
	Coli	Conner	Cor	Cox	Crof
D	Davis	De	Dig	Doo	Dr
E	Ells
F	Fie	Fly	Fow	Fren
G	Gat	Gillm	Gor	Gray	Greer
H	Hals	Harr	Has	He	Hens	Hill	Hodgs
	Hor	Huh
I, J	Jai	Jo	Joi
K	Keh	Kem	Kim	Kiv	Kop
L	Lap	Lawr	Lew	Ll	Loo	Ly
M	Mall	Mans	Marv	McC	McG	Me	Mes
	Milt	Moor	Mort	Murr
N	Ni	Nor
O	Om
P	Pan	Pas	Perr	Phi	Pim	Post	Pro, Q
R	Raym	Rh	Rin	Robi	Ron	Rus
S	Sanbu	Sc	Se	Shar	Sher	Sin	Smi
	Sn	Spe	Stan	Stew	Str	Sun
T	Te	Thor	Tr	Tur
U, V	Vane
W	Wall	Warr	Webs	Wen	Whi	Whitm	Wild
	Willis	Wine	Woodh
X, Y, Z

Back to Lake OHGenWeb
Please note: If you have other Lake County resources or corrections please contact the webmaster at CynthiaGenWeb@gmail.com
Last updated 7 July 2013	© Cynthia Turk 2004-13. All Rights Reserved.