Elkhart Public Library has the resources and items you need to find your own history and family story.

Our genealogy collection includes searchable obituary and local history records, maintained by reference librarians. Also to aid your search, available materials include county history biographies, cemetery records, census data, city directories, yearbooks and more. We also maintain a photo archive attached to the Indiana Memory project.

EPL has a number of items relating to Indiana history, as well, including genealogy publications like magazines and newsletters. Some items in the collection are rare and only are available for viewing in our downtown location.

For information and pricing to receive copies of records, contact the Reference Department or visit our research assistance page for forms and pricing.

Yearbooks

School annuals cannot be checked out, but are available upon request on the second floor of our downtown location. Please consider donating any years missing.

• Elkhart High School – Collection spans 1908-1972 and 2021-present
• Elkhart Central High School – 1973-2020
• Elkhart Memorial High School – 1973-2020
• Concord High School – 1936-current

Web sources

For advanced research, Elkhart Public Library offers visitors free access to Ancestry.com Library Edition. The database access is available only inside our five locations.

Heritage Quest, another online resource, is available to all EPL cardholders. Two free sites for research are RootsWeb and USGenWeb Project.

See the full list of genealogy search tools on our Digital Library page.

Death records

Cemetery indexes available currently in the collection:

• Cemeteries of Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.3 C393)
• Rice Cemetery, Elkhart, Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.5 K27ri)
• Grace Lawn Cemetery, Elkhart, Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.5 J68)
• Oakridge Cemetery, Goshen, Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.5 K2702)
• Violett Cemetery, Goshen, Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.5 K27v)
• Tombstone Records of Elkhart County, Indiana R General (929.3 M145)

The Elkhart County Genealogical Society has published the records of many Elkhart County funeral homes. The society’s quarterly publication is the Michiana Searcher, and can be located in the local history collection on the second floor of the downtown location.

• Dale White
• Walley-Mills-Zimmerman
• Andrew Stephens and Hartzler-Gutermuth-Inman
• Waterman-Westbrook-Clouse
• Stemm-Lawson-Peterson
• Lienhart and Weaver
• Rieth, Rohrer, Ehret and Lienhart
• Carlyse Wagner
• Herbert Wise LeRoque-Frost and Werker

More local records

Works Progress Administration indexes and county historical documents are available for viewing upon request. Two particular titles of note are “Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties, Indiana” (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, Publishers, 1893) and “An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Elkhart County, Indiana” (Higgins, Belden & Co., 1874).

For information regarding birth and death certificates, contact the Elkhart County Health Department vital records office. The Elkhart County clerk’s office has court information on marriages and dissolutions.