ChicagoCookGenealogy

I will be on vacation the following dates:

6/5/2008 thru 6/15/2008

7/4/2008 thru 7/13/2008

8/15/2008 thru 8/24/2008

12/20/2008 thru 1/4/2009. This is purposely scheduled due to the down time for the archives. They will have two 4 day holidays and will be very crowded on open dates. Not much research can be done when there are so many people there fighting for use of the minimal equipment available. In addition, the public transportation will be supercrowded with shoppers and party-goers!

LDS is also working on Chicago and Cook County records. The ongoing project currently is the birth index 1871-1916. Volunteers are needed! If you can spend about half hour you would be able to enter 30 birth records. For further information see

www.familysearchindexing.org

Once you volunteer, you can download a branch from this project by selecting the "download from" option and scrolling to the birth index line.

I hope to "see" you online!

Ancestry.com has added indexes to the Drouin Collection! These are records of baptisms, marriages and deaths from all religions in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, as well as some early records in the USA. After months of browsing these manually, I have already found several I hadn't found before.  I am really thrilled with this addition, and hope you will also have some luck!

Another exciting development is the digitization project being conducted by the Irish Family History Foundation. Many counties are already online, more are being added very soon. I have tested some of the counties and found that we can search for free, and will get a minimal index stating the year of the event and the person's name. Viewing the actual record, however costs some big bucks. It's a shame because just a few years ago obtaining Irish BMD only cost about 2 euros. Ah, the costs of technology.   

I just now searched all online counties for the marriage of John Dolan and Ellen Cassidy, using dol & wildcard; cass & wildcard, 1836, + or - 4. I got one marriage that listed both names, and the year was 1832. So I bit the bullet and paid @ $15 USD. What I got was a marriage date and parish, and the fact that they were Roman Catholic. Unfortunately, the bride was not Ellen Cassidy!  The parents weren't listed, either. BUMMER.

You can view the Irish Foundation website to look for your counties. Click on map and you will see shaded areas. Clicking on shaded areas will tell you whether or not the county is online, and, when it is expected to go online. Links to the county individual sites are also included. www.irish-roots.net

You also have the option of hiring them to do your research for you. At $15 per botched crack at it, maybe their research fees are worth it, though I shudder when I think of handing out THAT much at one time.  

Have Fun!

June   

 UPDATE: New website for Cook County BMD is:

www.cookcountygenealogy.com

 SOME of these records are now online, but not all. I caution you that there are still very many missing records, and the indexes are not user-friendly. I strongly suggest that you subscribe to the IL-COOK-CHICAGO mailing list at rootsweb to monitor the situation and to benefit from the problems/solutions that we have shared/resolved. Also be aware that if you have the index number, Cynthia and Molly may be able to obtain the records cheaper for you. Or they may be able to do a fishing expedition. Again, monitor the mailing list for help. Cynthia and Molly's websites are identified in my website under other help.

Please do not send me requests for assistance on these; I have no resources for BMD.

Good Luck!   

Chicago & Cook County birth, marriage and death records will go online this summer, estimated to be the first week of July. As I understand it, the records have already been digitized and are being added to the server at the rate of one million per month. The records that we will be able to view and print from our own home computers will have timelines to them; Birth records must be 75 years old, Deaths must be 20 years old and Marriages must be 50 years old. This archive will recoup the costs by charging you to print the records; check carefully, here. Cynthia still might be able to obtain some of those cheaper. Their website is under construction and not yet open to the public.  

I will update this blog as I hear more news.    

Series M1285 contains the soundex index cards 1840-1950 for parts of IL, WI, IN and IA. For more info on counties included see my naturalization pages. Note that Chicago begins after the fire in 1871.

I will no longer perform these searches because you can now do so yourself, for free at ancestry.com. These cards are browseable in their World Archives Collection.