The fine print wins again

I was recently reminded of a very important tip: always read the fine print.

For those of you familiar with Illinois genealogy, you'll know the website for the Secretary of State's office, which includes a few online vital records databases (found here). One of these databases is the the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, covering 1763-1900. Obviously, not all counties are covered for the whole of the time frame in the title. For one thing, not all of the counties were in existence at the same time. So the title is a little elastic on that front. But when I was wondering where a couple might have gotten married, sometime during the 19-teens, I thought I knew that this database wasn't going to be any help. Yeah, I broke that oh so important rule of not reading the fine print and not remembering that the titles don't always tell the whole story. Here's the page that I forgot to revisit while brainstorming on my latest marriage query:

http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/marrlst.html

What it is, is a county and time range table listing the availability of the county marriage records which are included in the online database. As you can see, some counties are not included at all, while others only include a portion of time within the titles' date range. The county in which I ended up finding the marriage record I was looking for, was Richland Co. Richland happens to have a date range between 1840 and 1915, well after the 1900 limit established by the title. And Richland county isn't the only one with records included in the online database well beyond 1900. The marriage records for Brown, Fulton, Jersey, Menard, Morgan, Pike, Pope, Stephenson, and Wayne counties all stretch into the 1920s within this database.

And you wouldn't know it unless you read the fine print...

Success!!! Marriage records found in IL

Ok, for those who have been able to follow my rather schizophrenic genealogy assignments over the past month or so, congratulations! For everyone else, I've been working my way through the NGS Home Study Course and got stuck on the final lesson of the first CD. The lesson has three assignments, two of which I've completed. The final assignment was causing me problems though. I needed to complete a marriage records survey at a local repository, preferably one with the ledgers, manuscripts, loose pages, etc. of genealogists' dreams. Well that didn't happen for me here in IL. I made two wasted trips to two different county courthouses because the marriage records were deemed restricted by the staff, even though IL is not technically considered a closed records state. Another county courthouse in IL denied access to me before I called a courthouse over the border in the neighboring state. They too, denied access to marriage records unless you're looking for an ancestor in which case you have to pay them before they will copy that single record for you. So the question of how to complete this assignment when no one would let me see the records was becoming more and more complex. I made a few discoveries though which might be helpful for those who have some work to do with IL records.

• the Family History Library has microfilmed marriage records for Cook County (including the city of Chicago), Lake County, and McHenry County in IL and Kenosha County in WI-all of the counties that denied access to the records in-person. All of the films are available to rent.
• IL marriage records can also be viewed at various depositories throughout the state thanks to the Illinois Regional Archives Depository system, called IRAD. Their website is found at http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/irad/iradhome.html and you can search the holdings online to find out where the records you might need are located

Today, I visited the IRAD facility located at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb. It was about 4 hours round-trip but considering all of the time I had already wasted trying to complete this assignment, it was worth it just to have found what I needed. I focused on the Lake County, IL marriages but the IRAD holdings at NIU also include various records (not just marriages) for Boone, Bureau, Carroll, DeKalb, DuPage, JoDaviess, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Putnam, Stephenson, Whiteside, Will, and Winnebago counties. There are six other system depositories located throughout the state. You can find the breakdown of county records here http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/irad/iradaddr.html#NIU.

Helpful websites for Illinois research

For anyone doing Illinois research, including work in Chicago, the IRAD site is one to bookmark

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/irad/iradhome.html

They have a few online databases, some by surname others by location and type of records, and tell you where you can find various records including, marriage, naturalization, coroner's inquest files from Chicago and more.

A good supplement to this site for your search for vital records in Chicago (and Cook Co in general) is the Cook County Clerk's genealogy site at http://www.cookcountygenealogy.com/. While they do not have all of their vital records digitized yet, it is possible to search the names of those whose records have been listed on the site. If you cannot find a person and/or event that should have occurred in the area you can request a manual search. They charge $15 for the first record ordered and full ordering instructions can be found on the website.