Online Resources for Researching Hillsdale County History

Books

Hathitrust.org - HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Here you'll find many books concerning Hillsdale County (over 100 probably). The nicest feature is having the ability to search these books!

Some of the most important books for learning Hillsdale County history are linked below.

History of Hillsdale county. Michigan, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. By Philadelphia. Everts & Abbott 1879.

Portrait and biographical album of Hillsdale County, Mich. :containing full page portraits and biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens of the county, together with portraits and biographies of all the governors of the state, and of the presidents of the United States. 1888

Compendium of history and biography of Hillsdale County, Michigan / Elon G. Reynolds 1903

Hillsdale Directories: 1894 | 1901 | 1908 | 1919 | 1923 | 1925 | 1927 | 1931 | 1933 | 1935

Tip: When searching for books on HathiTrust, I recommend using the "Advanced full-text search" feature. Also, if you're browsing on a tablet or cell phone, navigating the website is much easier when holding your device horizontally.

Another great website for reading books online for free is Archive.org, which has many of the same books.

Online Library Resources

If you have a Michigan library card, you can access very nice websites and databases such as US Census records, Newspapers archives, military records, maps, ebooks.

Check out these lists of resources that are available.

MeL Resources

The resource I find most useful through the Michigan eLibrary is the MyHeritage Library Edition which includes family history/genealogy resource including more than 6 billion historical records from the United States, Europe, Latin America, and other regions. Includes the full USA federal census (1790-1940); census of England and Wales (1841-1901); U.S. World War II Army Enlistment as well as records of Union and Confederate Civil War soldiers. Over 2 billion family trees.

MyHeritage Library Edition is not as good as Ancestry.com, but it's free.

Library of Michigan Resources

This one you have to request a library card. But once you have that, as you can see by clicking the link above, you can access Newspapers.com and Newspaperarchive.org for free, which has old Hillsdale newspapers dating back to 1849.

Library of Congress

If you love history and you haven't browsed Loc.gov, you've been missing out. Here you'll find Hillsdale County's oldest map (1857), and many detailed Sanborn fire insurance maps for the county. Just search for "hillsdale michigan map"

Maps

Hillsdale County 1857 map.

Also HistoricMapWorks.com has the following maps.

GLO Records

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has a website with General Land Office (GLO) Records. Here you can search original land patents. I have quite an obsession with this website!

https://glorecords.blm.gov/

Hillsdale County Register of Deeds

Another great resource for investigating local history are the deeds, and Hillsdale County Register of Deeds office have put them all online! Many of deeds you can just search the owner's name, but when it comes to the oldest deeds, you'll have to reference the Index to the Deeds first. It takes a little getting used to. You can also find all of Hillsdale County's village and sub division plat maps.

https://countyfusion1.kofiletech.us/countyweb/loginDisplay.action?countyname=Hillsdale

Hillsdale College Digital Archives

Hillsdale College has digitized all kinds of stuff, old college newspapers, photos, letters, yearbooks. You can even download everything in high resolution for free!

Currently there does appear to be something wrong with the website, but it still works. If you get an error just click Advanced, and then Proceed to website (if you're using Chrome for example).

https://digitalarchives.hillsdale.edu/