The society was organized in 1965 by a group of people who wanted to collect and publish the birth, marriage, death, burial and earliest land records of Wayne County. By doing so, interest in researching ones family grew and a genealogy group was formed under a section of the Wayne County Historical Society. In May 1978, the Wayne County Genealogical Society, section of the Wayne County Historical Society was granted a Charter as a Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. In 1996, the members voted to form The Wayne County Genealogical Society, a Chapter of OGS, as an independent group from the Historical Society.