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. For reasons unknown, 82 of the books were not indexed with the others. Those books are:

59, 65, 68, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 88, 102, 111, 122, 123, 129, 134, 138, 143, 145 , 146, 148, 150, 182, 185 189-191,192, 201, 211, 216, 227, 232, 233, 237, 239, 240, 241-244, 249, 255, 258-267, 268, 269-270, 272, 273, 274, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 285-287, 291-292, 312, 319, 321, 333, 339, 355, 383, 392, 459, 460, 507, 515

** The books listed above in bold type have missing pages.

Explanation of these indexes arrangement: After the 1884 fire, 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 local 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.

Buyer Surname Indexes:

Names*** A-B, Names C-F, Names G-K, Names L-O, Names P-S, Names T-Z

Seller Surname Indexes:

Names*** A-B, Names C-F, Names G-K, Names L-O, Names P-S, Names T-Z

*** Note: Unknown names or comments sort before surnames that begin with letter “A”.

(The Indexes are every word searchable, use Ctrl-F)

Deed books #153 through #4414 are available by selecting Book Type DEED on the HCRO Book/Page Search.

Deed books #153 to #4414 and indexes are available on microfilm at the following locations:

  • Recorder’s Office, 138 East Court St., second floor, room 205, downtown Cincinnati
  • Cincinnati History Library and Archives, Cincinnati Museum Center, 1301 Western Ave (Only books #153 to #854).
  • Family History Library of the LDS Church, in Salt Lake City Utah (Only books #153 to #477 on microfilm).

Deed books 450 to 854 are available on the Family Search Website.

Reference

More information on deed book indexes can be found on page 68 of this book:

Hamilton County, Ohio, Guide to Recorder’s indexes and Documents 1794-1988, by William H. Graver (2003), Little Miami Publishing, Milford Ohio.

Copies are available at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, 800 Vine St. Cincinnati Ohio