Welcome to Hendricks County, Indiana Genealogy

Recent Additions:

• Added an index of the 1894 enrollment list to the Military Records section of the Data page.

• Added an index of the 1886 enrollment list to the Military Records section of the Data page.

• Added an index of the deaths mentioned in The Republican's Year in Review issues for 1892-1896 to the Obituaries section of the Data page.

• Added some divorce notices to the Divorces section of the Data page.

• Hendricks County was officially formed by an act of the Indiana legislature in April, 1824. It was formed from the area of Putnam County and some unorganized territory, and named Hendricks in honor of Indiana's governor, William Hendricks. Guilford Township was one of the first places to be settled. Several families, many of them of Quaker faith, traveled from Guilford County, North Carolina and settled there, in the area around present-day Plainfield.
• In 1851 an area of Middle Township was used to form Union Township, and in 1863 an area of Brown Township was re-named as Lincoln Township, in honor of President Abraham Lincoln. Hendricks County also acquired some land from Morgan County in 1868.
• Hendricks County borders on Boone County to the north, Montgomery and Putnam Counties to the west, Morgan County to the south, and Marion County (Indianapolis) to the east. During the early settlement families came to Hendricks from the Indianapolis area, because of the good farmland and opportunities to be had. The trend was reversed after 1880, when many Hendricks County residents left to pursue jobs in the city.

• The USGenWeb Project had humble beginnings. In 1996 a group of volunteers in Kentucky put the genealogy databases for their state in one single entry point, with the purpose of centralizing genealogy information, as well as putting genealogy materials online. Indiana volunteers quickly followed suit, forming the INGenWeb. Volunteers are always welcome, so if you're interested in hosting a county or otherwise helping, please contact Debby Beheler, the INGenWeb's state coordinator. If you don't know what county in Indiana your ancestors were from, try visiting the Indiana Unknown County page.