About the Union County Historical Society
The Union County Historical Society collects and preserves the material record of Union County, Ohio, a largely rural county northwest of Columbus whose seat is Marysville. The society is volunteer-run, and its museum exists because of a single bequest: Lieutenant Colonel Dana Woods Morey (1876-1953) left his home at 246 West Sixth Street to the society for use as a museum. The house is an 1891 Queen Anne-style brick residence, and it has been restored to its early twentieth-century appearance, so that the building itself is the first exhibit a visitor encounters.
The Morey House keeps its original gas light fixtures, cobalt-blue stained-glass windows, parquet floors and hand-milled oak and burled-maple woodwork, along with carved mantelpieces, decorated porcelain sinks and a zinc bathtub. In 1965 the society added an annex to house the larger objects in its collection; its entrance door is a replica of the door from the Union County boyhood home of Charles W. Fairbanks, the Ohio-born Vice President of the United States under Theodore Roosevelt.
The collection is stronger than its small-town setting might suggest. Its centerpiece is the 1905 Brennan Automobile. Nearby is the bell from the county's third courthouse, which rang from 1838 to 1883, and one of the largest collections anywhere of items relating to Vice President Fairbanks. The society also holds memorabilia of "Colonel" Noah Orr, known as the "Union County Giant," prehistoric artifacts from the county's Native American past, and military and toy collections.
Collections and Research Services
The society's research library is open from late May to mid-November on Wednesdays from 12:30 to 3:30 pm. Its archives hold county and township histories, church records, military materials, photographs, newspaper collections and other historical documents from Union County. The society is candid that it is not the main stop for genealogy: it directs family researchers to the Marysville Public Library, which keeps daily hours including evenings and weekends and holds most of the county's genealogical records on microfilm, and to the Union County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Early county records beginning in 1820 are at the Union County Records Center and Archives, 128 South Main Street, Marysville. Use the society's archive for the photographs and local histories that give a house or a family its context, and see our guides to finding old photos of a house and neighborhood and finding out when a house was built for how to combine those sources with deeds and tax records.
Planning Your Visit
The museum is at 246 West 6th Street in Marysville. Public museum hours and any admission charge were not posted on the pages we reviewed, so check uchsohio.org or call (937) 644-0568 before visiting; the society also hosts an annual dinner and other events listed on its site. Elsewhere in Ohio, two larger county societies on this directory show what a well-developed local collection can grow into: the Stark County Historical Society in Canton and the Summit County Historical Society in Akron.
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