Perry County’s First Families project connects genealogy and local history

Perry County marked its bicentennial with a First Families of Perry County ceremony hosted by the Lafayette Spring Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The observance took place on Nov. 1, 2014, alongside a day of festivities tied to the county’s 200-year milestone.

The Perry County Museum says the First Families project asked residents to research their genealogy and identify ancestors connected to the county’s early settlement. That work made family records part of a larger public accounting of who helped build Perry County’s farms, churches, schools, river towns and courthouse-centered communities.

The museum anchors that effort in the old Perry County Courthouse in Cannelton, where the building has served as the home of the Perry County Museum since the Perry County Museum Board of Trustees bought it in December 1998. The museum describes itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and says artifact and financial donations are welcomed. It also says volunteers are needed to open the doors on Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m. for tours.

Perry County’s own geography helps explain why the First Families project matters. The county was created in 1814 and named for Oliver Hazard Perry. Tell City is the county seat, while Cannelton, founded in 1837 and platted in 1841, grew as a historic Ohio River community. The museum’s location in Cannelton ties the genealogy project to the county’s river, town and courthouse history in one place.

For residents tracing a Perry County line, the project points to the records that usually carry the strongest evidence: family papers, census entries, cemetery markers, church registers and county documents. In a county where local history is preserved through museums, volunteers and family research, the First Families ceremony turned ancestry into a civic record of how Perry County came together.