Sedgwick County, Kansas Genealogy

United States Kansas  Sedgwick County

Guide to Sedgwick County, Kansas ancestry, family history and genealogy and courthouse sources including birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, wills, deeds and land records, Civil War records, family histories, cemeteries, churches, tax records, newspapers, and obituaries.

County Courthouse
Sedgwick County Courthouse 525 N Main Street Wichita, KS 67203 Phone: 316.383.7666 District Probate Court has marriage and probate records from 1870. District Civil Court has court records. County Clerk has land records from 1887. Community Health Deppartment (1900 E. 9th, Wichita, KS 67214) has birth and death records.

Parent County
1867--Sedgwick County was created 26 February 1867 from Butler and Marion Counties. County seat: Wichita

Record Loss
There is no known history of courthouse disasters in this county.

Populated Places

 * Wichita

Townships
Current townships include: Afton, Attica, Delano, Eagle, Erie, Garden Plain, Grand River, Grant, Greeley, Gypsum, Illinois, Kechi, Lincoln, Minneha, Morton, Ninnescah, Ohio, Park, Payne, Riverside, Rockford, Salem, Sherman, Union, Valley Center, Viola, Waco, and Wichita.

Neighboring Counties



 * Butler
 * Cowley
 * Harvey
 * Kingman
 * Reno
 * Sumner

Atlas
[1882] Historical Atlas of Sedgwick County, Kansas, published by John P. Edwards, 1882. The 1982 reprint has a 17 page index of names. http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/224001

[1905] Standard Atlas of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities and Townships of the County, published by George A. Ogle and Company. http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/209421

Cemeteries
BillionGraves: Each page has Google map, and searchable database of photographed headstones.


 * Cheney Cemetery, Cheney
 * Eldridge Cemetery, Union
 * Harrington Cemetery, Conway Springs
 * Highland Cemetery, Wichita
 * Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, Goddard
 * Ressurection Cemetery, Wichita
 * Viola Cemetery, Viola

Maps

 * Early Township maps of Sedgwick County http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/wcf/townships/index.asp
 * Township Map of 1887 Sedgwick County, Kansas with enlarged views of each township (My Genealogy Hound)

Military

 * For information about Civil War records see Butler and Marion counties.

Newspapers
Tihen Notes http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/collections/local_history/tihen/

Dr. Edward N. Tihen read and took notes from nearly every issue of Wichita's newspapers dating from 1872 to 1982. Presented as PDF documents are nearly 6000 transcribed pages of the "Tihen Notes," as they have become known. Dr. Tihen's notes reflect the people, places and events that have shaped Wichita's history.

Obituaries
Midwest Historical and Genealogical Society Library has three Indexes of the obituaries in scrapbooks in their library.


 * Index of obituaries from The Wichita Eagle and Beacon for the period 1955 to 2014.
 * Obituaries from the Catholic Advance for 1999.
 * Miscellaneous obituaries which they have indexed.

Photographs
The Wichita Photo Archives contains over 1,000 photographs of Wichita and Sedgwick County.

Probate
Online Records


 * 1803 – 1987 Kansas Wills and Probate Records 1803-1987 at Ancestry.com — index and images $

Birth Records

 * 1818 - 1936 at FamilySearch.org — index
 * 1885 - 1911 Kansas, Births and Christenings Index, 1885-1911 at Ancestry.com — index $

Death Records

 * 1885 - 1930 at FamilySearch.org — index
 * 1885 - 1930 Kansas, Deaths and Burials, Index, 1885-1930 at Ancestry.com — index $
 * 1887 - 1910 Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas, Death Index, 1887-1910. Alphabetical index giving name and certificate number.

Marriage Records

 * 1840 - 1935 at FamilySearch.org — index
 * 1855 - 1911 at | FamilySearch — index and images
 * 1855 - 1911 Kansas, County Marriages, 1855-1911 at Ancestry.com — images $

Societies and Libraries
Lawrence &amp; Lucile Wulfmeyer Genealogy / Special Collections Center at the Wichita Public Library, 223 South Main Street, Wichita, Kansas, 67202. 316-261-8509. Open Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.  Closed Sundays from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Closed major holidays. Contains over 25,000 genealogy books and magazines covering Kansas, the Great Plains, the Midwest, the South, the Colonial States, and Native Americans. Other major collections include: Dawes Rolls Applications, Draper Manuscripts, Germans to America, Italians to America, and the Barbour Collection. Over 15,000 rolls of microfilm cover the city's major newspapers, the Wichita Eagle and the Wichita Beacon, and state and federal census.

Wichita Public Library

Midwest Historical and Genealogical Society

Family History Centers

 * Wichita Kansas Family History Center

Web Sites

 * USGenWeb project. May have maps, name indexes, history or other information for this county.
 * Sedgwick County, Kansas Genealogy and Family History (Linkpendium)
 * Sedgwick County, Kansas Genealogy and Family History (Linkpendium)