Record Atlas
6 eras · 1500–2026 · 1 places

Northern Kentucky — Boone and neighbouring counties

Florence, Erlanger, Burlington, Edgewood, Elsmere. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1500–1729 Before registers no registers survive

Before registers.
1729–1798 Ohio Valley frontier — Big Bone Lick no registers survive

A Frenchman mapped the Big Bone Lick area in 1729. A Native American village at Petersburg shows habitation dating to about 1150 and 1400.
1798–1856 United States — Boone County, Kentucky National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry

Boone County was created in 1798 from part of Campbell County, with Burlington as county seat. Ferries carried traffic across the Ohio River to Cincinnati.
1856–1866 United States — Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry

Margaret Garner and her family escaped slavery in 1856 by crossing the frozen Ohio River near Covington.
1866–1970 Northern Kentucky National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry

The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, completed in 1866, replaced the ferries between Covington and Cincinnati.
1970–2026 Northern Kentucky — the Cincinnati suburbs National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry

Growth accelerated from the 1970s with the completion of I-75, new industrial parks and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Boone County.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1500–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

1 places on this ground

1742 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 1682 more.

All record regions · The map