Every county in Ohio holds a paper trail: deeds, probate files, tax lists, pension papers. This is where we go looking for the ancestors hiding behind them.
Brick Walls & Buckeyes is built on three decades of hands-on Ohio research — courthouse basements, probate ledgers, land tract books, and the occasional dead end that turns out not to be dead after all. Each Short walks through one county's records, one soldier's pension file, or one family's paper trail, sourced from primary records rather than compiled trees.
If you've got Ohio roots and a brick wall of your own, you're in the right place.
Revolutionary War soldiers whose descendants migrated west — tracing the family from the enlistment roll to the far side of the frontier.
Veterans who personally settled in Ohio, profiled from their NARA M804 pension files — service, struggle, and the land they finally called home.
The engagements that don't make the textbooks — Fort Laurens, Crawford's Defeat, Blue Licks, and the fights that shaped the frontier.
Formation, settlers, probate, land, tax, churches, newspapers, repositories — every Ohio county gets the same eight-episode treatment. Some are finished, some are underway.
We help researchers move beyond unsourced family trees toward conclusions supported by original records and sound evidence. We interpret the past in its historical context without excusing injustice, label uncertainty honestly, and never claim more than the records can support, because every name in the archive was a real person who deserves dignity.
