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Religion in Ohio was an early and important factor in settlement. The first Moravian mission was established in 1772. Presbyterians and Quakers were in the state at an early date, the latter having established forty-three monthly meetings and settlements between 1801 and 1883. The Presbyterians founded seventeen towns between 1784 and 1799. Baptists, Congregationalists, several reformed groups, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, United Brethren, Methodists, and Catholics arrived prior to 1850. By 1890 the latter two denominations were the largest in the state. The Methodist circuit in Ohio was organized in 1798, with circuit riders traveling from log cabins to camp meetings across the territory. In 1831 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints migrated from New York to Kirtland in Lake County. No thorough survey exists of any of the holdings of individual churches in Ohio, although many are on microfilm through the FHL. The Ohio Genealogical Society is presently undertaking a church records survey.
Historical Records Survey for Ohio produced an Inventory of the Church Archives of Ohio Presbyterian Churches . Records of the Quakers in the Miami Valley and the Church of the Brethren of the Southern District of Ohio are available on microfilm through the FHL. The Western Reserve Historical Society has an extensive Shaker manuscript collection. Bluffton College in Bluffton, Ohio, has Mennonite records
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According to the Ohio Genealogical Society, the majority of Ohio counties have published cemetery records in one form or another. They suggest contacting local societies or one of the major genealogical libraries in the state.
Ohio Cemeteries (Ohio Genealogical Society, 1978), is a listing comprising all known cemeteries included in several sources. It is organized by county and by township, alphabetically, with an index by cemetery name. Included are concise locations of the cemetery and publication information. Ohio Cemeteries: Addendum (Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Press, 1990), includes updates and revisions to the previous volume. County chapters of the Ohio Genealogical Society can be contacted regarding cemetery information in their counties.
See also:
- Ohio Cemetery Records: Extracted from the “Old Northwest” Genealogical Quarterly (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1984), which includes an every-name index by Elizabeth P. Bentley and covers northeastern and central Ohio
- Ohio Adjutant General's Office, Grave Registration of Soldiers Buried in Ohio (Salt Lake City, Utah: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1958).
Cemetery records and gravestone inscriptions are a rich source of information for family historians. Cemetery and other sources of information associated with death include:
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- Biographical works
- Burial permits
- Church burial registers
- Cemetery records (often several different kinds are kept)
- Cemetery indexes (often compiled by genealogical societies)
- Cemetery sextons’ records
- Cemetery deed and plot registers
- Death certificates
- Death indexes
- Family bibles
- Family burial plots
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- Funeral director’s records
- Grave opening orders
- Gravestone (monument) inscriptions
- Military records
- Monuments and memorials
- Necrologies
- Newspaper death notices
- Obituaries
- Probate records
- Published death records
- Religious records
- Transcriptions of cemetery inscriptions
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