Society has collection of nearly 20,000 Ohio yearbooks

BELLVILLE — The Ohio Genealogical Society maintains the largest collection of Ohio high school and college yearbooks, roughly 20,000.

Tom Neel, the library director of the Ohio Genealogical Society, said there are more than 600 school districts in Ohio currently, but Ohio had 2,674 schools back in 1914.

Many of these schools have more than a 100-year run with their yearbooks.

The yearbook collection includes a book from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, alma mater of NBA star and Akron native LeBron James. The society has the 2000 yearbook when he was a freshman.

The society maintains a collection of yearbooks from Ohio’s public and private elementary, middle and high schools, as well as from colleges. There is one yearbook on file for the schools and duplicates are taken to Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne,

Indiana.

For researchers and the general public, a lot of things can be found in a school yearbook: birth date, birth place, nicknames, poetry, sporting accomplishments, student photos taken every year, family, associates, neighbors, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and more. The early yearbooks and until the 1940s some had birth dates listed in them.

Genealogists love yearbooks. Yearbooks identify nearly everyone in a community of school age, place students in a grade and gives a clue to their age and includes all the activities which our relatives participated. Yearbooks provide researchers the names of friends and associates. Cousins often attend the same school and many students meet their life partner while getting an education.

The state genealogical society stores yearbooks on steel shelving in a temperate-controlled, state-ofthe-art facility. There also is an archival vault which is temperature controlled.

Neel said the oldest yearbook is from 1876. Yearbooks come from all 88 Ohio counties.

Most of the yearbooks are donated to the society, Neel said.

The yearbooks are used on site and cannot be checked out. The nonprofit organization charges a $5 fee to use the library for the day or $40 for an annual membership. The yearbooks are listed alphabetical by city on the shelves in two rooms.

Neel, who has served at the center since 1984, said

Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana has a national collection of yearbooks. The site is the second largest genealogical library under Salt Lake City.

“A lot of people do research and look for mainly photographs of their grandparents and great-grandparents,” Neel said.

Neel said in some rural areas, photographs of the seniors and were pasted into the yearbook with glue. The glue has worn over the years and the yearbooks are fragile and in need of repair.