The applicant must be a current member of the Huron County Chapter of The Ohio Genealogical Society and must be a direct descendant of an individual(s) who settled in Huron County, Ohio, by December 31, 1870. All ancestors proven in the County prior to 31 December 1830, will be considered a PIONEER. All ancestors proven from 1 January 1831 to 31 December 1850, will be considered a SETTLER, and all ancestors with residence in Huron Co. from Jan 1, 1851 to December 31, 1870 will be considered a BUILDER. Township dates of eligibility are given on the map included with the full packet of instructions.

An original application for membership in the First Families of Huron County, Ohio, is $10.00, which covers as many ancestors as the applicant is able to prove. Each supplemental application for another ancestor(s) at a later date will be $5.00 with application. The $5 fee also applies to First Family members who are adding ancestors to the BUILDER category. An applicant may also enroll a proven living parent listed in the original application, and enter their children or grandchildren for a fee of $5.00 for each person. These persons need not be members of HCC/OGS. Proofs needed to enter children and grandchildren are a birth certificate for each person and a marriage record for a female applicant to prove name change.

Applicants who have had their descent approved will be honored at the annual Awards Banquet held in April. At that time, membership certificates and pins will be presented. The deadline for receiving applications for First Families of Huron County, Ohio is 31st of December each year.

1. Applications are to be typed or legibly hand printed. The name of the month is to be specified: 16 Nov 1942 not 11/4/42 or 4/11/42.
2. Please mark and separate each generation starting with yourself and paper clip each generation separately. For each generation, put your documents in chronological sequence to prove birth, marriage, death, and residence when applicable. Note that one or more of these documents must establish the parentage or "link" between each generation from child to parent.
3. Each pertinent document of proof submitted should be numbered and correspond with the explanation at the end of each generation section. If you are submitting more than one ancestral family, keep all information for each family together, making sure your ancestral chart shows the interconnections. On each set of documents to be submitted, use a red pencil and draw an arrows to the information you wish to identify.
4. All documents of proof must be clearly marked. They must indicate their source, bible records must be submitted with their title page, showing the publication date. Newspaper clippings must be identified by the name of the newspaper, and date of the clipping's appearance. Book references must give volume, page number and include a photocopy of the pertinent pages and the title page for identification. Married female applicants must include a copy of their marriage license or record to prove their married name.
5. Original pieces will not be accepted. Photocopies must be legible. hand copied or typewritten copies must be certified and "True Copies" of an official of the courthouse, library or office where data was found. An applicant cannot certify his own copies as true!
6. After completing, mail the application form, fee and a five generation chart, along with copies of all supporting documents to:

The Huron County Chapter of OGS
PO Box 923
Norwalk, OH 44857-0923
All documents submitted will become the property of the chapter and will be kept in a file at the Firelands Historical Society Library.

RULES OF EVIDENCE
The nature and extent of the evidence submitted as proof in this application shall be sufficient to prove that the applicant is directly descended from the pioneer ancestor(s) named in the application, and that it is sufficient to differentiate between any two persons of the same name residing in the same area at the same time.

1. Primary or collateral evidence from vital statistics, court house, or other government records, church and school records are considered usually to be beyond doubt, and are excellent proof.
2. Secondary evidence, such as census records, newspaper clippings, old letters, old bible or other family records contemporary to the facts reported, are considered almost as authentic.
3. Circumstantial evidence, implied facts, or hearsay are not considered as proof, unless backed up by primary or secondary evidence.
4. Oral, written, or published family traditions are often incorrect, and are not accepted as proof.
5. Printed or manuscript genealogies, genealogical records, or genealogical compilations are not acceptable proof, unless they are well documented and proved in themselves, or backed up by other acceptable proof. Family group sheets and unsupported information from an amateur or professional genealogist are considered in this context as genealogies, and not acceptable as proof.
6. Lineage papers from other patriotic or hereditary societies, by themselves are not considered proof. The document copies used for proving the lineages might be considered proof, if they follow these rules of evidence.
7. Material authored by the applicant or his family, cannot be considered as proof.
8. Documents used as proof must, either by themselves, or in conjunction with other acceptable documents, actually state the fact to be proven. If the document merely implies the fact, this is not considered proof. An example is the expression, "Heirs" or "Heirs-at-law" used in some estates. This indicates different things in different states, and at different times, and is not necessarily a proof of direct descent. If these statements are to be used as proof of direct descent, the applicant must include with his application, copies of inheritance law of the state, showing that, at the year the proving document was dated, it was proof of descent "in the blood line", and must also include proof that the testator had at least one child. Ohio's laws on inheritance have changed many times through history, and what is true during one period, may not be true at another. Other examples of implied evidence which are not acceptable as proof are:
   1. Census records which show the name of the head of the family only, with numbers of family members or others by age group, prove only the family head actually named. The unnamed persons can not be proven as children or wife of the family head, nor as residents, no matter how well they match with other records. Next door or close neighbors on a census record can not be proven as related merely by their closeness on the census.
   2. A father is not proven as being in the area just because a child was born there. A birth proves only that the mother was certainly there on the birth date.
   3. Blood descent is not necessarily proven by owning the same land as an earlier owner by the same name, whether the land was received by inheritance, or by purchase.
9. Old letters, family records, etc., can be accepted as proof for only the facts the writer of the record or letter would logically know, of his/her own knowledge. They cannot be accepted as proof for facts the writer could only have obtained by hearsay from older generations, or other sources. Identification of the writer and the date of the letter or record is a must. The same rule is true of county histories or other published biographies. The biographer (who gave the information) must have been able to know the information by his own knowledge.
10. Land transactions (deed, warrants, grants, etc) can only be accepted as evidence of settlement in Huron County, Ohio by 1830/1850/1870, if the record actually states the individual was "of the county", and was dated by 1830/1850/1870. There were many absentee landowners and speculators in early Ohio who never set foot in the state.
11. A tax list of 1830/1850/1870 is usually a record of taxes levied by those years, and therefore could prove residence, if the individual is shown as a resident and not an "absentee owner".
12. Females must be proven by their maiden name. Marriage records, church records, newspaper obituaries, family bibles, and birth and death records of their children usually record maiden names. These, or similar records, in conjunction with a deed dated in 1830/1850/1870 showing: (1) her married name with her husband's and (2) their place of residence in Huron County, OH is one way of proving "by 1830/1850/1870" residence of female ancestors.
13. The ancestor(s) proven in Huron County, OH by 1830/1850/1870 must be in a direct line back from the paternal or maternal ancestor of the applicant.
14. When a father and/or a mother are above the normal age for having children, the parentage claimed is suspect and must be proven beyond a doubt.
15. Photographs of tombstones usually prove only birth and death dates. However, sometimes relationships are shown on the tombstone and are considered good proof (depending upon the age of the stone). Proof of a tombstone in a Huron County cemetery is not an acceptable proof that a person lived and died in the county. Many times people were brought to this county for burial, but did not actually live within the county.

Please remember that a statement is not necessarily true, just because it is in print!