Detailed descriptions of early deeds and deed book indexes can be found on the Recorder's Historic Records page.
Surname indexes for Deed Books A through W2 can be seen at the Hamilton County Genealogical Society website's Hamilton County Deed Index pages.
Additional information on Hamilton County property records can be found at the Hamilton County Genealogical Society website's Land Records pages.
In the beginning, deeds books not only contained deeds but also mortgages, releases, mechanic liens, leases, power of attorney, partnerships, veteran discharges and other miscellaneous records until they were written in separate unique books. Indexes have been created for non-deed records in Deed Books A through W2, called Sundries Index #1. It is available online at the Hamilton County Genealogical Society's webpage.
When separate mortgage books began in 1823 with book #20, book #21 was made primarily a deed book. From that point on, as the books were filled, the next number was assigned to either deeds or mortgages depending on which was filled first. This continued until book #239. From that number onward, there is a deed book and mortgage book with the same number.
Over 16,000 pages are in the deed books A through W2. To make the books available as soon as possible, all pages in a given book were processed with the same photo enhancement settings. As time permits, all the pages will be reviewed and those of poor quality will be individually enhance to provide the best image possible. See the quality information in this PDF file.
Some books were microfilmed with the left and right hand pages together. If you enter a page number from the indexes, the pages displayed will be pages that are about twice the value of the page you want.
To get close to the page desired, enter a "page" number that is one half the value of the page you want. For example, to see page 100, the image = 100/2 = 50, plus 1 (for title page) = 51. So enter a "page" number of 51. Use previous page or next page arrows in the page display window to get the right page.
The disastrous court house fire in March 1884 damaged many county books. The information in the burnt books were painstakingly copied into new books in the same position as the original almost as if a modern photocopy machine was used. Those pages totally destroyed, along with other detailed information on deed books A through W2 is available in this table.
Revised: 8 January 2017