PAULDING — The Paulding County History Museum is taking presale orders for a reprint of a scarce 1882 county history, with delivery expected in November, according to The Crescent-News.
Melinda Krick, who led the project, said the book will bring readers material that has been hard to obtain. The newspaper reports that the original "Historical Hand-Atlas 1882 Illustrated and History of Paulding County, Ohio" survives in only a few oversized copies, while photocopies in circulation are small and difficult to read.
The new edition is a nine-by-12-inch hardcover of 124 pages. It carries local, township and village histories, biographies of community leaders, township maps and photographs the paper describes as never before printed. Krick also used an 1878 plat map identified as the earliest known map of county property owners, and she restored dozens of images, many made from glass-plate negatives, working with a computer program rather than AI.
The report says the 1882 volume holds original information absent from the better-known 1892 county atlas, which was reprinted in 1976. Both were compiled by Everett A. Budd, a Civil War veteran and early settler who reused some 1882 content a decade later. The paper notes Paulding County was in its canal era in 1882 and about to gain north-south and east-west rail service, which began months after publication.
Krick told the paper the material will be new to many readers. Presale orders are due Nov. 10 through the museum, with forms also available on the museum's Facebook page, at the library and at West Bend Printing in Antwerp. She is scheduled to join other local authors at the museum's Meet the Author Night on Tuesday, Nov. 17.