These are like phone books of yore. You can search by name and you can also search by address! This is very helpful if you don’t know who has lived in your house before. These are also typically available on ancestry.com.

Once you have a name, finding more information becomes a lot easier. Head over to ancestry.com to search up a name. Census records have all kinds of information about people. These should also have the address listed to double check you’re looking at the right person/family. Of course the website has a multitude of other records to search, which can also be very enlightening

Many of the historic local newspapers have been digitized (but not all). newspapers.com and newspaperarchives.com provide searchable databases. Records for a specific house or person can be hard to find, but you never know. The library offers the use of these websites for free, but are limited in their search.

The library also maintains vertical files that you can browse through (paper research!). These topics are not listed in the library catalog, so just go see what you can find!

These maps were produced by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company in the late 1800s and through the mid-1900s. The early ones start out in downtown and encompass a wider area as they become more recent. They’re also just really cool to look at! You can find them online at the Library of Congress. There are maps from 1885, 1889, 1892, 1896, 1902, 1909, and 1916. The years 1927 and up to 1948 are still under copyright restrictions and are not available online.

But that’s not all! We have resources here as well! Ours are more limited, but also worth checking. Our photograph collection is searchable on our website at howardcounty.pastperfectonline.com. Often it’s better to search with a general term rather than a specific one. For example: if you live at 123 West Walnut Street you can start with “Walnut Street.” We also maintain some vertical files that we can check for you. 

We can always check and see what we have in our archives. It’s best to make an appointment rather than stop in, that way we can be prepared if we find something. 

The Recorder’s Office in the County building maintains a collection of all deed books going all the way back to the original land patents. It’s always good to call ahead and make sure it’s a good time to show up, and then happy hunting. These typically require a landowner name to get started, which can be from any point in history. You can go forward and/or backward in your search!