Uncover Your History

Have you been curious about where your family came from? Perhaps there is an origin story told in your family that you've heard for generations that you want to confirm, or just learn what your relatives' lives were like, where they traveled, or what they did for a living. Or maybe you've walked past a building or street sign and wondered about who the person was behind the name.

One of our genealogy databases, HeritageQuest Online, makes it easy to begin probing those questions and uncover the history.

HeritageQuest Online

HeritageQuest Online offers over 5 billion digital records and images that date back to the 1700s, pulled from Ancestry.com. It has the essential collection of U.S. federal census records, but you will also find thousands of genealogical sources like family and local history books, city directories, military files, wills, and even unique collections like the Freedman's Bank records. All of this content is digitized and searchable, making it quicker to find information about your family's ancestors or learn a bit more about public historical figures. Best of all, it's accessible from home with your library card, unlike Ancestry, which can only be accessed within the library.

HeritageQuest Online vs. Ancestry Library Edition

If you've used Ancestry Library Edition at the library or have your own paid subscription, you might be wondering how HeritageQuest differs if it pulls from similar genealogy databases. Ancestry Library Edition offers a much larger and broader collection of historical records, while HeritageQuest focuses more on the most frequently used resources for U.S. based research, such as census and probate records. See the full chart here.

Searching the Database

The homepage is designed to help you jump right into your research. At the top left, you will find the navigational menu, linking to the Search page, Research Aids, and Maps, making it easy to move between the different tools.

The quickest way to begin is with the search box in the center of the page. Enter as much information as you know, such as a first and last name, a place where the person lived, or a birth year. By default, HeritageQuest searches across all of its genealogical collections at once, but you can also choose to search a specific collection if you're looking for a particular type of record.

If you already know which records you'd like to explore, you'll also find shortcuts to some of HeritageQuest's most popular collections, including Federal Census, City Directories, Immigration Records, and Cemetery Records.

Below the collection library is StoryScout. Those who have used Ancestry before might recognize this feature. Enter an ancestor's name and location, and StoryScout will create an interactive presentation that brings together historical records, photographs, maps, and other documents to tell that person's life story.

Let's walk through an example by searching for one of the library’s founding advocates, Benjamin H. Warder and see what comes up.

Browsing a Collection

Benjamin Head Warder was a prominent 19th-century industrialist in Springfield, best known for managing factories that produced harvesting machinery, including the infamous Champion reaper and mower. Upon his retirement, he gifted the city the Warder Public Library building, which opened in 1890 and still stands today at the corner of High and Spring Streets. It served as the city's main library location until a larger facility was built on South Fountain Avenue in 1989.

Since he was a prominent historical Springfield figure, his name appears in a variety of records, of which we can find in HeritageQuest Online.

We’ll type his name and location into the search fields to start. Warder lived in many places in his lifetime, but we are interested in his relationship with Springfield, Ohio, so that is what was supplied in the search field here.

NOTE: Genealogy research often requires a little flexibility, so if you're not finding the person you're looking for or are not getting many useful results, try simplifying your search by removing details like a middle name, birth year, or place lived to expand the results. Or try different spellings of names, as they can vary.

The left-hand panel allows you to filter your search by record type and time range. To see all results of a record type, click the blue parent label. 

For more granular results, click the dropdown arrow (carat) to see the nested child labels, which correspond to specific record subcategories. The example above shows results for the Biographical sketches and place history books. Once you've found something intriguing, click the "View Records" button to access the full image.

Open a Record

While genealogical records help establish dates and family relationships, biographical sketches in local history reference books add the stories behind those facts. In this excerpt from Ohio: A Four-Volume Reference Library on the History of a Great State, Benjamin H. Warder is mentioned in a biographical sketch describing prominent people of Springfield and his gift of the Warder Library to the citizens of Springfield in 1890.

A second historical reference book tells the same story but adds another interesting detail. In History of Ohio, Warder's gift to the Springfield community is again mentioned, this time noting that his donation totaled $100,000, which would roughly be about $3.7 million today. Comparing multiple sources like these can help confirm facts while uncovering additional pieces of information that may not appear elsewhere.

How to Get Started

If you've been curious about genealogy or have always wanted to try researching your family history, HeritageQuest Online offers a great first step. We also have these print resources to help get you started:

Genealogy for Beginners

Organize your Genealogy

Genealogy

With your Clark County Public Library card, you can access many of our genealogy databases from home and start discovering the people and stories that shaped your own family's past. Visit our Online Resources page and go through our History & Genealogy , opens a new windowpage to view them all.