Established in 1935, the Works Projects Administration (later Works Progress Administration) was developed to aid those out-of-work after the 1929 stock market crash followed by the Great Depression. The Federal Writers' Project (Federal Project Number One) created jobs for unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians. One of the many projects was the series Inventory of the County Archives of Ohio.
Each book in this series contains a full transcription of the original manuscript with the addition of legal terms and definitions, current governmental addresses and websites, nongovernmental addresses and websites, and an index of inventory entries to help the researcher.