Records from Douglas County

Abstract: The majority of the paper records from Douglas County that the State Archives hold are from the Register of Deeds. These records include materials related to deeds, liens, and mortgages on property; power of attorney records; contracts; and bonds. The State Archives also holds two volumes of minutes from the Board of County Commissioners' meetings. While the records span the near-century between 1860 and 1950, the majority of them are from the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries.

Microfilmed records from Douglas County include district court dockets and journals, marriage license records and divorce case files, and naturalization records. There are also probate court records dealing with estates, including dockets and journals as well as specific types of records from the process, such as wills, real estate inventories and appraisements for individuals who died intestate, and final accountings from executors and administrators. Deed records from the Register of Deeds' office are also on microfilm, as well as some cemetery records for Eudora and for Lawrence.

Administrative History: Douglas County was established and organized in the Kansas Territory in 1855. It was named for Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, a strong proponent for popular sovereignty, a theory concerning how new territories should be added to the United States that allowed individuals in the individual territory to vote concerning whether slavery would be allowed within its boundaries. Due to its closeness with the state border of Missouri and to its central importance in the territory (Lecompton was the site of one of the four constitutional conventions), Douglas County was a major site of the Bleeding Kansas troubles prior to and during the American Civil War.

The county seat and largest city in Douglas County is Lawrence. Townships include Clinton, Eudora, Grant, Kanwaka, Lecompton, Marion, Palmyra, Wakarusa, and Willow Springs Township.

[Kansas State Historical Society. "Kansas Counties -- Douglas County, Kansas." http://www.kshs.org/genealogists/places/counties.php?county=DG (accessed 26 May 2009).]