Coroner Records for Harris County, Texas, 1890s

An index to coroner inquest records for Harris County, Texas, 1891-1896, is available on Portal to Texas History at: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth142194/.

It is a downloadable Excel spreadsheet with information from the Harris County Archives. The inquest information here is different from information in our book, Coroner's Inquests & Miscellaneous Records of Harrisburg & Harris County, Texas, 1884-1898 by Imogene Vick Macias, call number M152 HARRI TEX. The book states their information is from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

If a customer is searching for a coroner inquest in the 1890s in Harris County, you could refer them to both of these resources.

JO

HCAD: A tool for finding Harris County residents and researching house histories

I discovered the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) website while looking to buy a house, as it gives the appraised value of Harris County properties. However, it would also be useful when looking for living people or recent property owners of Harris County, or for researching house histories in Harris County. 

To use this website, choose Property Search --->  Quick Search. 

You can search by address or by owner name. When searching by owner, note the correct way to enter a name: surname first initial. Don’t use a comma between the surname and first name, and just use the first initial of the first name.

Here I searched “Majors L”, for Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man, rumored to live in Houston.

This search result includes his wife’s name, Faith, as an additional owner, indicating this is indeed the Six Million Dollar Man's property. Note the difference between the property address and the mailing address.

If you want to view all details about the property, use the scroll bar on the right to scroll down the page. Annoyingly, there are two scroll bars to coordinate – one for the web page and one for the record itself.

You can also choose the tax year you want to search, as far back as 2013. Don’t think, though, that you can’t find a name beyond that date. Within each property record there is an area of Ownership History. Click on it and you’ll see previous owners of that property dating back to 1988. My guess would be that’s probably when HCAD started entering records into a computer system.

Here are the previous owners of Lee Major's property at 5042 Tangle Lane. As the property record indicates the house was built in 2004, this is a comprehensive ownership of the house.

Sometimes when I click on Ownership History I get an error message. Try it again later.

Sometimes instead of seeing the owner’s name you’ll see the phrase, “Current Owner”. In this case the owner petitioned HCAD to remove their name from the website. The Public Information Act does not require a governmental body to provide the owner’s name on the internet.  If you really want to know the owner’s name, contact HCAD at (713) 957-7800 for more information.

You can also search by address - useful for when you want to find out the current or past owners of a property, or if you want information about the property itself, such as its value, square footage, date built, or recent remodels.

Joy Oria

Harris County Marriage Records Online

Here is a handy reference guide to which Harris County Marriage Records are available online in different databases.  As of this writing, there is currently some form of online index and records for the years 1837-1965, and online index for the years 1966-present.  See below for full details.


Harris County Clerk's Website

• Marriage Licenses (index):  12/16/1947 --- present
• Informal Marriages (index):  01/02/1970 --- present
• Marriage Licenses (index and images):  01/01/2003 --- present

FamilySearch

• Marriage Records (index and images):  07/16/1837 --- 02/09/1931
• Marriage Records (index):  1966 --- 2010

Ancestry Library Edition

• Marriage Records (index and images):  07/16/1837 --- 01/23/1965
• Marriage Records (index):  1966 --- 2011

Clayton Library's Harris County Marriage Records on Microfilm:

• Marriage Records Vol. A-P (indexed by volume):  07/16/1837 --- 01/20/1900
• Marriage Licenses and Returns (indexed by volume):  11/11/1908 --- 07/27/1959
• Marriage Licenses and Returns (not indexed):  08/06/1837 --- 11/07/1966

list updated: 06/20/17


SB

Houston Newspaper Death Extractions, 1899-1909

Here is an excellent resource for Houston newspaper death notices for the years 1899-1909, from four Houston newspapers (primarily the Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle).  The death extractions were completed by volunteers with the Houston Genealogical Forum, and the database of records was posted to the HGF website.  It can be viewed from this link:


 http://hgftx.org/death-extractions/


The HGF website has some other great collections as well, including a Bible records transcription project.


Steven

Houston Chronicle Obituaries Online

Here is a brief summary of my morning presentation on Houston Chronicle obituaries online:

Full-Text Obituaries --- 10/29/2001 to present

• visit www.chron.com
• hover the mouse pointer over "Local" (do not click)
• click "Obituaries"
• click "Advanced Search" (located in the box labeled "Search Obituaries & Guest Books")
• change "Past 30 Days" to "All Time" (this will search obits from 10/29/2001 to present)
• enter first and last name of deceased and click "Search")
• if match is found, click "Read Obituary"

Lists of Names of Deceased taken from Houston Chronicle Obituaries --- 10/29/1985 to present***

• visit www.houstonlibrary.org
• click Research --->  Resources By Category --->  Newspapers
• click "Houston Chronicle (Article Search)"
• enter "obituaries" as an 'all text' keyword
• enter the surname you are searching as an 'all text' keyword
• click "Search"
• search results are sorted by year on the left side of the screen

*** Note: For some strange reason, these obituary lists of names seem to almost disappear after Feb 2009, although they are occasionally spotted in later months/years under different heading ("deaths" and "life tributes", for example).

I will add the above info to the Digital Newspapers Finding Aid at the Reference Desk as well.

Happy Hunting!

Steven 

Houston Area Digital Archives Issues

When there are issues with the technical operation, the searching, or the display in the Houston Area Digital Archives, questions and/or comments should be directed to Roland Lemonius (31477).

There have been some problems with the move of the Archive over to a new ContentDM platform, and this is causing some frustrating technical issues.  

When a customer calls and mentions that there are technical issues with the sources on the Houston Area Digital Archive, as an example with city directories, Roland is the technical issue person to transfer that call to.  

HMRC is the supplier of materials for the digital archive, as are other locations, but the keeper of resolving issues with searching, display or any technically related issue is Roland.  Many calls have been transferred to HMRC, and since that is the wrong place send these types of queries to, the customer is often not happy when a second transfer is the answer. 

This might mean we need to ask the customer if they are having problems when they search, or do they want to talk about a specific collection in the Archive?  This might help to determine who to forward the call to.  Display / technical issues: Roland.  Collection information and queries; HMRC.

Thanks for your help!

Sue

Houston Street Name Changes

A Steve Morse website showing street name changes in Houston between 1930 and 1940.  If you click "Show More Cities" in the upper left hand corner, you will find a large collection of other cities in which street name changes are also listed.

http://www.stevemorse.org/census/changes/HoustonChanges.htm

Steven

Houston Area Digital Archives

Everyone -

The link to the HPL digital archive is: http://digital.houstonlibrary.org

Here we will find a growing source of Houston city directories that have been digitized. Please let our customers know about this source.

Currently there seems to be about 1866 - 1921/22. HMRC has received a grant to digitize more current directories also, so continue to look for more.

Also note there are videos and oral histories and much more mounted.

Sue