A County Remembered
This site is a volunteer collection of St. Joseph County genealogy and local history material. Some pages contain records and indexes, while others preserve photographs, maps, biographies, township histories, and contributed research notes.
St. Joseph County borders Branch, Cass, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren counties in Michigan, and Elkhart and LaGrange counties in Indiana. Neighboring county records may be useful when tracing families across county and state lines.
About The County Name
In the early 1800s, the northwestern region of the United States and parts of Canada were often referred to as "New France." As Jesuit missionaries moved into the area, they set up a mission in what is now Niles, called St. Joseph on the "River of the Miamis." The river later became known as the St. Joseph River. When the Territory of Michigan created the county on October 29, 1829, it was named St. Joseph.
Search This Site
Search support will be confirmed as the cleanup continues. The existing site currently includes a Google custom search element; this prototype keeps the page usable while we decide whether to preserve that service or use another static-site search option.