Demographic studies can make use of birth, death, and enumeration records, poll books, voting abstracts, agricultural statistics, and children's home records. Municipal records , although basically administrative in nature, can be used for historical and genealogical research. Studies may be completed charting a municipality's growth and its legislative history through council minutes, ordinance and resolution records, and minutes of various boards and commissions. Reports on crime and violence, utilizing police blotters and mayors' and municipal court records, could be done as well. Genealogists have found cemetery and health department records to be very useful in their research.
Townships also can provide much useful historical information.
Township records such as trustees' minutes, indentures, poor relief records, cemetery records, and records of boards of education and health are used for a variety of research purposes, especially for interpreting social, economic, and family history. The records generated by school districts , including those transferred by consolidated township boards of education, are definitive sources for understanding the history of local education. Genealogists have found that class registers, enumerations, and pupils' permanent records are valuable in tracing family history. It is through the use of these historically valuable local government records that a more complete assessment of the past can be accomplished. In addition, the use of these past records can help in planning for the future.