St. John's Unitarian Church Records: Searching the History of one of Cincinnati's Oldest Churches

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Suzanne Reller

The Confirmation class of 1903 with Rev. H.G. Eisenlohr

The Archives and Rare Books Library holds the records of a few local churches, including St. John’s Unitarian Church, one of Cincinnati’s oldest houses of worship. This church’s rich history began in 1814 when Joseph Zaeslin (also spelled Zaeslein), a Moravian minister, organized a church for German immigrants in Cincinnati under the name The German Evangelical and Reformed Church. The history of this church is important to both Cincinnati’s religious history and to the history of Cincinnati’s German-American community. Continue reading →

Hamilton County Probate Court Makes Over 1.1 Million Historic Records Available Online

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Suzanne Reller

Probate Judge James Cissell announced on December 29, 2009 that probate records dating back to 1791 have been digitized and are now available for public use on the Probate Court website. The five-year project to digitize the records was intended to both preserve the original, sometimes fragile, records and provide increased public access to them. Included in the digitized records are indexes and docket books for estates, wills, trusts, marriages, guardianships, births, deaths, and physician certificates as well as minister’s license indexes and probate entries. A list of all available records and the search pages are available at http://www.probatect.org/courtrecordsarchive/bukcats.aspx. Access to these records is important to historians and genealogists who are looking to document the life changing events of family and historic figures. Continue reading →

Action Housing for Greater Cincinnati Records Fully Processed and Available for Research

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

A building on the corner of 13th and Race Streets, which was rehabbed.

The late 1960s saw a myriad of social reforms as part of the War on Poverty. Cincinnati was not immune to this movement, and among the many efforts to improve the plight of the poor in the city, was an attempt to increase the availability of safe and adequate housing for low-income individuals.

For this purpose, Action Housing for Greater Cincinnati was formed in September of 1968 by the Cincinnati City Council and local business interests. Although the organization only lasted until the early 1970s, Action Housing was responsible for building or rehabilitating approximately 1,700 living units for low income families in Cincinnati.

Continue reading →

Cincinnati Birth and Death Record Availability

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

One of the many filing cabinets filled with birth and death records.

Digitization has begun on the City of Cincinnati’s birth and death records prior to 1909. For the next several months, portions of the records will be unavailable for research while they are being digitized. If you wish to view any of the birth and death records, please contact the Archives and Rare Books Library by phone at 513-556-1959 or by email at archives@ucmail.uc.edu to ensure that the records are available. Also, please be aware that replies to research requests may be delayed while certain records are inaccessible. Further information on these records and guidelines for submitting a research request can be found on the Archives and Rare Books Library website. Full web access to the digitized records should be available by Summer 2010.

First German Baptist Church Records Finding Aid Now Available

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

The Constitution of the Synzygus Verein of the First German Baptist Church, which appears to have been adopted prior to 1915.

The records of the First German Baptist Church or Deutsche Baptisten-Kirche of Cincinnati have been fully processed and a finding aid is now available on the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository. The collection holds various records for the church between 1880 and 1991 including church meeting minutes, financial records, and Sunday school attendance sheets. The material in the collection prior to the 1930s is primarily in German.

The records of the First German Baptist Church illustrate a small, but significant religious movement among Cincinnati Germans in the late nineteenth century. The First German Baptist Church was founded in Cincinnati in 1857, with the assistance of the Ninth Street Baptist Church, whose congregation saw the need for a Baptist missionary movement among German immigrants. Continue reading →

UC Libraries Awarded a LSTA Grant to Digitize Cincinnati Birth and Death Records

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

One of the many filing cabinets filled with birth and death records.

Genealogists, social historians, epidemiologists, and public health historians will soon have a new extensive, online resource to assist them in learning about birth and deaths in the City of Cincinnati. The University of Cincinnati Libraries have been awarded a $140,437 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the State Library of Ohio to digitize 340,000 birth and death records of the City of Cincinnati prior 1908. The records will be available on OhioLINK’s Digital Resource Commons beginning in August of 2010. Continue reading →

A Glimpse at a German-American Family: The Helmecke Family Collections at the Archives and Rare Books Library

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

Carl Helmecke with his wife Mildred and daughter Roberta in Philadelphia in 1919.

The German-Americana Collection at the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Library holds a wealth of materials on German immigration to the United States and the experiences of these immigrants once they were here. Two collections that document the experiences of one of these families are of the Helmecke family. These collections span from the father’s immigration to Cincinnati in 1902 to the beginning of his son’s academic career in Colorado in the 1930s.

In 1902, Stephen Helmecke of Braunschweig, Germany came to the United States to work for the Globe Wernicke Company, a library furniture company located in Cincinnati. Stephen’s wife, Marie (Engel), and his two children, Carl Albert and Marie Gertrud, followed him to the United States in 1903. The family lived in Cincinnati for five years before moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan where both Carl and Gertrud attended the University of Michigan. Carl eventually received his Ph.D in German and taught at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. Gertrud became an osteopathic physician, and was the first woman elected president of the Ohio Osteopathic Association.

Continue reading →

Major Urban Reference Collection Now Available in the Archives & Rare Books Library

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Suzanne Reller

In 2004, after 90 years, the City of Cincinnati’s Municipal Reference Library was about to come to an ignominious end, consigned to the dumpster. With the active involvement of city planner Skip Forwood and UC history professor Judith Spraul-Schmidt, the bulk of this valuable collection of urban resource materials was rescued and given a home in the Archives & Rare Books Library’s Urban Studies Collection. Now, it is catalogued and available once more for research.

Photo: “The Flying Squad, Co. No. 4” from the 1913 Annual Report of the Cincinnati Fire Department, one of the many resources of the Muncipal Reference Library

The Municipal Reference Library was created in 1913 under the Municipal Code of Cincinnati, which detailed the purpose of the library, and the Administrative Code, which stated that it would be maintained by the city’s planning department. Consisting primarily of city records, periodicals, reports, ordinances, news clippings, and studies, the MRL historically had been open to the public, but primarily used by city employees. Continue reading →

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Tag Archives: Cincinnati History