Adding faces to the names of those who have served our country in the military during any conflict. Most families have a picture of grandpa in his military uniform while serving during World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. Some have more recent photos of men and women curently serving. A lucky few have treasured pictures of veterans of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, etc. Please share those photographs of Jay County men and women who served our country in the military during times of war. Send picture with a short bio to
Jim Cox to put a face to our heroes.
Is there anyone out there who is interested in researching the men and women of Jay County who served in the military in any of our country's wars? There is some information on Civil War and World War I on the website, but we need to preserve the memory of those who served!
Looking for volunteers.
In moving each page of the site there were several errors and typos found.
Please let us know if you spot an error.
We want the site to be as accurate as possible, but can't fix something if we don't know about the error. Email Jim Cox
Jay County is divided into 12 Civil Townships: Bear Creek, Greene, Jackson, Jefferson, Knox, Madison, Noble, Penn, Pike, Richland, Wabash and Wayne. You can find maps of the county and its townships by clicking on the Land icon below.
Jay County was formally organized March 1, 1836.
Portland is the County Seat. The locating commissioners met on the first Monday in June, 1836, and decided upon the site at Portland and, at a special meeting of the County Board on December 5, 1836, gave the new County Seat the name of Portland. First settled in 1837 by H. H. Cuppy, C. Hanna, D. W. McNeil, and others, by 1849 it contained 60 houses and had a population of 300.
According to the Society of Indiana Pioneers, an individual was a pioneer of our county if they resided here on or before December 31, 1840.
History of Jay County
In June 1996 a group of genealogists organized the Indiana Comprehensive Genealogy Database. The idea was to provide a single entry point for all counties in Indiana where collected databases would be stored.
The databases were indexed and cross-linked so that even if an individual were found in more than one county they could be located in the index. At the same time, volunteers were found who were willing to coordinate
the collection of databases and generally oversee the contents of the web page.
Many thanks to Sandi Koscak for her years of work as the past coordinator. She created most of these pages and we plan to continue to add to her work.
Your current county co-coordinators are
Elaine Geyer and Jim Cox.
Thank you for your patience as we improve and add to the content to make researching your ancestors in Jay County ever more productive!
If you have photos, news clippings or other genealogical or historical
material that you would like added to the website, please send them to Elaine Geyer.
The National Coordinator is Linda K Lewis
If you are interested in hosting a county, contact the
INGenWeb State Coordinator,
Indiana State Coordinator Lena Harper.
Assistant State Coordinators are Jim Cox and Karen Zach