Illinois Genealogy

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Illinois Genealogy Research Guide

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Illinois Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

Illinois grew out of the French colonial Illinois Country, where Cahokia (1699) and Kaskaskia (1703) were among the earliest permanent European settlements in the interior of the continent. The region passed to Britain in 1763, was taken for Virginia by George Rogers Clark in 1778, and became United States territory after the Revolution. Admitted as the twenty-first state in 1818, Illinois combines some of the oldest civil and church records in the Midwest with a public-land survey and a wealth of free state-produced indexes, making it a rewarding — and highly county-dependent — place to trace a family.

• Capital: Springfield. The seat of government moved from Kaskaskia to Vandalia in 1820, and from Vandalia to Springfield in 1839.
• Statehood: December 3, 1818, the twenty-first state, formed from the Illinois Territory (organized in 1809).
• Counties: 102. The earliest, St. Clair (1790) and Randolph (1795), were created under the Northwest Territory before statehood; the last, Ford County, was formed in 1859.
• Land type: Illinois is a federal (public-domain) state, not a state-land state. First title to most land passed directly from the federal government by patent through the General Land Office, so the original transfers are documented in federal land records; later transfers between individuals are recorded as deeds at the county level. Older French village lots and common fields were confirmed to their holders as private land claims.
• Nickname and motto: the Prairie State; the state motto is State Sovereignty, National Union.
• Where records live: most genealogical records — deeds, probate, court files, and (before statewide registration) vital records — are kept at the county level, by the County Clerk, Circuit Court Clerk, and Recorder of Deeds. Chicago and Cook County records survive only from 1872, because the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871 destroyed the earlier ones.

Libraries and Archives

Illinois’s major collections cluster in Springfield, which holds state-government and historical records, and in Chicago, which holds municipal, court, and immigrant records; county offices, regional depositories, public libraries, and local societies hold material for their own areas. The principal Illinois repositories include:

• Illinois State Archives (Springfield) — state and local government records, and the administrator of the Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) system, which places original county records — court, probate, land, tax, and many birth, marriage, and death records — at seven state universities and makes them searchable through its Local Governmental Records database. The Archives also hosts a suite of free genealogical databases described below.
• Illinois State Library (Springfield) — Illinois documents, maps, newspapers, and reference collections.
• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (Springfield) — holds the former Illinois State Historical Library collections: local histories, published genealogies, manuscripts, newspapers, and maps.
• Newberry Library (Chicago) — one of the leading genealogy and local-history collections in the country, strong in Midwestern, ethnic, and family-history sources.
• Illinois State Genealogical Society (ISGS) — the statewide society, publisher of the ISGS Quarterly, with member databases and research aids.
• Chicago History Museum — manuscripts, photographs, directories, and published sources for Chicago and Cook County.
• Cook County Clerk, Bureau of Vital Records — the official custodian of Chicago and suburban Cook County birth, marriage, and death records (from 1872).
• Chicago Public Library — city directories, newspapers, neighborhood history, and genealogy collections.
• National Archives at Chicago — federal court, naturalization, and military records for Illinois and the surrounding region.
• Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center (Augustana College, Rock Island) and the Polish Genealogical Society of America (Chicago) — leading repositories for Swedish and Polish family history, reflecting two of the state’s largest immigrant communities.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive Illinois microfilm and digital collections, and county courthouses (County Clerk, Circuit Court Clerk, and Recorder of Deeds) and local historical and genealogical societies hold records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized Illinois records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of Illinois vital, land, probate, court, church, and naturalization records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive Illinois vital, census, naturalization, land, military, and probate collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — Illinois vital records, censuses, and immigration collections.
• Findmypast ($) — Illinois vital, census, and migration collections.
• Illinois State Archives Databases — free; statewide death and marriage indexes, public-domain land sales, military service rolls, servitude and emancipation records, and indexes to many county records.
• Illinois Digital Archives — free; digitized documents, photographs, and records contributed by libraries and institutions across the state.
• Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections — free; digitized historic Illinois newspapers, hosted by the University of Illinois.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, which includes many Illinois titles.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized Illinois histories, published record abstracts, and law books.

Law and Government

Illinois’s territorial and state statutes explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced genealogical records, and many of the foundational texts have been digitized and are free to read.

• Pope’s Digest, 1815 — the compiled laws of Illinois Territory, gathered by Territorial Secretary Nathaniel Pope and later reprinted in two volumes by the Illinois State Historical Library; free on the Internet Archive.
• The territorial session laws of the Fourth through Sixth Sessions (1815–1818), passed at Kaskaskia, and the separately published Laws of Illinois Territory, 1809–1818, are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.
• Revised Statutes of the State of Illinois, 1845 — the first comprehensive codification of state law after statehood; free on HathiTrust.
• Revised Statutes of the State of Illinois, 1874 (compiled by Harvey B. Hurd) — the revision that remained the framework for Illinois statutory arrangement for more than a century; free on HathiTrust.
• The annual Laws of Illinois (session laws) and the several nineteenth-century revised statutes are digitized on the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Marriages were recorded from the time each county was organized. Births and deaths were kept only at the county level at first: most counties began recording them in 1877 under a State Board of Health law, and a weak 1843 registration act produced very few surviving records. Statewide civil registration of births and deaths began on January 1, 1916, after which county clerks and the state health department maintained the records jointly. Marriage records are not held by the state health department at all — the county clerk is the custodian — so for a marriage you go to the county and to the statewide index below.

Access. Uncertified genealogical copies are available from the Illinois Department of Public Health, Division of Vital Records, or from the county clerk, under time limits: births once the birth is at least seventy-five years old, and deaths for persons who died more than twenty years ago (but not before 1916). A fee and eligibility rules apply. For records before 1916, and for many later county records, the IRAD depositories can supply uncertified copies. Use these free statewide indexes to find a record, then order it:

• Deaths (pre-1916): the Illinois Statewide Death Index, Pre-1916, an ongoing State Archives index to county death records of roughly 1877–1915; copies are ordered from IRAD or the county clerk.
• Deaths (from 1916): the Illinois Statewide Death Index, 1916–1972, drawn from state health department death certificates. The 1916–1947 certificates are also free on FamilySearch and on Ancestry ($), and Illinois deaths for 1916–1950 are on MyHeritage ($).
• Marriages (to 1900): the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763–1900, an ongoing project of the State Archives and ISGS that cites the county register or license for each entry. County marriages are also free on FamilySearch (Illinois, County Marriages, 1810–1940) and on Ancestry ($), and Illinois marriages for 1763–1900 are on MyHeritage ($).
• Births: there is no statewide pre-1916 birth index, since early births were recorded only by county clerks; the county clerk and IRAD hold them. Illinois, Births and Christenings, 1824–1940 is a free index on FamilySearch.

Chicago and Cook County. Because the 1871 fire destroyed the earlier records, surviving Cook County birth, marriage, and death records begin in 1872. The Cook County Clerk’s Bureau of Vital Records is the custodian, and its Genealogy Unit supplies uncertified copies for genealogical research. FamilySearch hosts free indexes and images of Cook County birth certificates (from 1878), deaths (from 1878), and marriages (from 1871); note that deaths for Cook County outside the city of Chicago are missing for 1910–1915. Records after the genealogical access limits are obtained from the current Cook County and state agencies.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped Illinois’s jurisdictions and records:

• 1673 — Marquette and Jolliet travel the Illinois and Mississippi rivers; French exploration of the Illinois Country follows.
• 1699 and 1703 — French missionaries and settlers found Cahokia (1699) and Kaskaskia (1703); the Illinois Country later becomes part of French Louisiana.
• 1763 — France cedes the region to Britain at the end of the French and Indian War.
• 1778 — George Rogers Clark captures Kaskaskia for Virginia, which organizes the County of Illinois.
• 1787 — Illinois becomes part of the Northwest Territory.
• 1800 and 1809 — the area passes to Indiana Territory (1800) and then to the newly organized Illinois Territory (1809), governed from Kaskaskia.
• December 3, 1818 — Illinois is admitted as the twenty-first state, with its first capital at Kaskaskia.
• 1820 — the capital moves to Vandalia.
• 1832 — the Black Hawk War is fought in northern Illinois.
• 1839 — the capital moves to Springfield.
• 1848 — the Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed, linking the Great Lakes to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and confirming Chicago as a commercial hub.
• 1859 — Ford County, the last of the state’s 102 counties, is created.
• 1871 — the Great Chicago Fire (October 8) destroys the Cook County and Chicago records; surviving Cook County records begin the following year.
• 1877 — most counties begin recording births and deaths under a State Board of Health law.
• 1826–1885 — several county courthouse fires (for example, Logan County in 1857 and Cumberland County in 1885) destroy local records; where a courthouse burned, land, church, and census substitutes become essential.
• 1916 — statewide civil registration of births and deaths begins.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years, and Illinois appears as a state from 1820 through 1950; a fragmentary 1810 territorial enumeration also survives. The 1890 federal census was almost entirely destroyed nationwide, and for Illinois only one township (Mound, in McDonough County) remains. The federal censuses are free on FamilySearch and the National Archives 1950 site, and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

State and territorial censuses fall between the federal years and can help place a family in a given decade. Unlike some states, the Illinois enumerations name only the head of each household and give statistical counts of the other residents. What survives varies by year:

• 1810: a territorial enumeration of which only the Randolph County return survives.
• 1818: taken to show that the territory had the population needed for statehood; survives for many of the counties then in existence.
• 1820: a state census taken the same year as the federal count, listing heads of household with tallies of household members.
• 1825, 1830, and 1835: periodic state censuses of heads of household; survival is uneven, and only a limited number of counties remain for 1835.
• 1840: survives for a substantial number of counties.
• 1845: survives for only a few counties.
• 1855: a near-statewide enumeration, giving each household head with counts of members by age and sex.
• 1865: the last state census; it names the head of household and counts household members, including the number serving in the militia, which makes it useful for Civil War research. A handful of counties are missing.

The 1825–1865 state censuses (specifically 1825, 1830, 1835, 1845, 1855, and 1865) are searchable together in the Illinois State Census Collection ($) on Ancestry. Where censuses are missing, the best substitutes are Chicago and other city directories (Chicago directories survive from the early 1840s), tax lists, voter registrations, the 1862 militia and draft enrollments, and the federal mortality schedules for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 held at the Illinois State Archives.

Church Records

Because civil registration is late, church records are the most important substitute for vital records before about 1877. The French Catholic registers of the Illinois Country are among the oldest church records in the interior of North America, and later the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, German Lutheran, and (with Irish, German, Polish, and Italian immigration) Roman Catholic churches all kept baptism, marriage, and burial records that fill gaps in the civil record.

• The Kaskaskia parish registers of the Immaculate Conception mission survive in fragments from the early 1700s and are held with the Diocese of Belleville; Illinois, Diocese of Belleville, Catholic Parish Records, 1729–1956 is a free image collection on FamilySearch.
• Illinois, Chicago, Catholic Church Records, 1833–1925 is a free image collection on FamilySearch covering the many national parishes of Chicago.
• The Kaskaskia Manuscripts — a large body of French notarial records (marriage contracts, wills, inventories, deeds, and depositions) from about 1708 to 1816, originally kept at the Randolph County courthouse — document the colonial French and Creole families and their intermarriages.
• Thousands of digitized congregational registers for Illinois can be found through the FamilySearch Catalog by county and town, and Lutheran, Methodist, and other denominational records appear in FamilySearch and Ancestry collections.

Court Records

Illinois’s courts changed as the region passed from French and British rule to territorial and state government, and their records reach well beyond lawsuits into estates, guardianships, naturalizations, divorces, and name changes. The main courts a researcher encounters are:

• Circuit Courts — the principal trial courts of each county, holding civil, criminal, chancery (equity and divorce), and, historically, naturalization files; the Circuit Court Clerk is the custodian.
• County Commissioners’ Courts and County Courts — which handled county administration and, in many periods, probate and minor civil matters.
• Probate Courts — which proved wills, granted administrations, and appointed guardians in the counties and periods where they existed.
• Early French and British court records of the Illinois Country, including the Cahokia and Kaskaskia records, survive in print and manuscript; the published Cahokia Records, 1778–1790 is one example.

Many historic county court records are held by the IRAD depositories and are listed in the State Archives’ Local Governmental Records database, while original and modern case files remain with the Circuit Court Clerk of each county; the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County maintains its own extensive archives.

Ethnic/Minority Records

Illinois has been diverse since its founding, and knowing where a group settled points to the records most likely to document a family.

• French colonial settlers. The founding population of the Illinois Country settled Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and the surrounding villages. The Kaskaskia Manuscripts, the French Catholic parish registers, and the confirmed private land claims are the key sources for these families.
• Germans. One of the largest groups in the state, Germans settled heavily in Chicago, in Belleville and the surrounding southwestern counties, and across central Illinois; German Lutheran, Catholic, and Evangelical church records are essential.
• Irish. Present from the 1830s and 1840s as canal and railroad laborers and in Chicago, where Catholic parish and cemetery records are central sources.
• Scandinavians. Swedes settled the Bishop Hill colony and Chicago in large numbers, alongside Norwegian communities; the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center is the leading resource.
• Poles. Chicago became home to one of the largest Polish communities in the country; the Polish Genealogical Society of America and the Polish Museum of America library specialize in these families.
• Italians and eastern-European Jews. Both settled heavily in Chicago from the late 1800s, documented through parish, synagogue, cemetery, and society records held in Chicago repositories.
• African Americans. People of African descent lived in the Illinois Country under French and territorial rule, at first largely in slavery and later under a system of indenture that persisted into early statehood; the Great Migration then brought large numbers to Chicago. The Illinois State Archives’ free Servitude and Emancipation Records database indexes early registrations of enslaved and indentured people, and the DuSable Black History Museum and African-American church, cemetery, and newspaper records are further resources.
• Mexican Americans. Communities grew in Chicago and industrial areas from the early twentieth century, documented in parish, society, and neighborhood records.

The Newberry Library holds strong ethnic and local-history collections that complement these community sources.

Immigration and Naturalization

Chicago was one of the great immigrant destinations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though it is not an ocean port — newcomers arrived overland and by way of the Great Lakes and the railroads rather than at a single passenger depot. Surviving arrival records for the state are therefore chiefly Great Lakes and border-crossing manifests and, later, Chicago airplane passenger lists, together with the ship manifests of the eastern ports through which most immigrants first entered the country.

Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record — federal, state, county, or city — could naturalize, so the records are scattered among the circuit and county courts (now largely at the IRAD depositories) and, for Cook County, the Clerk of the Circuit Court’s archives. After September 27, 1906 the process was federalized and duplicate records were sent to federal authorities. Key finding aids include:

• Illinois, Federal Naturalization Records, 1856–1991 ($), the images of the federal-court naturalizations.
• Free FamilySearch indexes and images, including the Northern District naturalization index (1840–1950), U.S. District Court naturalization records (1870–1944), and Northern District petitions (from 1906).
• The Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s index to Declarations of Intention (1871–1929); Cook County naturalizations before 1871 were lost in the fire.
• The National Archives at Chicago holds the federal-court naturalization records for the region.

Land Records

As a public-domain state, Illinois was surveyed under the federal rectangular system and its land was sold through the General Land Office, so first title is documented in federal land records rather than state grants. First transfers from the government are patents; later transfers between individuals are recorded as deeds at the county Recorder of Deeds. The first federal land office opened at Kaskaskia, and additional district offices operated at Shawneetown, Edwardsville, Vandalia, Palestine, Springfield, Danville, Quincy, Chicago, Dixon, and elsewhere as settlement spread.

Where the records are kept.

• Federal level: the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records site provides free images of the federal land patents, and the underlying land-entry case files are held by the National Archives.
• State level: the Illinois State Archives’ free Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales database indexes the initial sales of public land at the federal district offices, searchable by purchaser or by legal description.
• County level: deeds and mortgages are recorded by the county Recorder of Deeds, and many older county deed records are held by the IRAD depositories.

The Illinois Military Tract. The most important named land district is the Illinois Military Tract, the wedge of land between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in the western part of the state, set aside under the Act of 1812 as bounty land for soldiers of the War of 1812. Surveyed in 1815–1816, it was divided into quarter-section (160-acre) lots, and patents for the bounty allotments were issued from 1817 to 1819. Because many veterans sold their warrants rather than settle, the soldier who drew a lot is often not the eventual occupant. The tract covers present-day Adams, Brown, Calhoun, Fulton, Hancock, Henderson, Knox, McDonough, Mercer, Peoria, Pike, Schuyler, Stark, and Warren counties, together with parts of Bureau, Henry, Marshall, and Putnam.

Online, the federal patents are free at the BLM site, the initial public-land sales are free in the State Archives tract-sales database, and Illinois Public Land Purchase Records, 1813–1909 ($) is on Ancestry; FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and land papers searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, and witnesses.

Military Records

Illinois took part in every American conflict from the territorial period onward, and the state produced unusually complete published rosters and free service databases.

• War of 1812 and the Black Hawk War (1832): the Illinois State Archives maintains free searchable databases of War of 1812 and Black Hawk War veterans, drawn from the original muster rolls; the Black Hawk War was fought largely in Illinois and generated substantial militia records.
• Mexican War: the State Archives hosts a free database of Illinois Mexican War veterans.
• Civil War: Illinois was one of the largest Union contributors, and the Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls database is a free, name-searchable transcription of the original rolls, giving each soldier’s regiment, company, and service details; free Union service records are also on FamilySearch, and the 1865 state census records militia service.
• Later conflicts: the State Archives holds service records and databases for the Spanish-American War and for veterans in later homes and honor rolls, and soldiers’ discharge records were often filed with the county clerk.

The standard published source is the multi-volume Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, whose Civil War rosters and companion volume covering the Black Hawk, Mexican, and Spanish-American Wars are digitized and available through FamilySearch and the Internet Archive.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — is among the richest sources for family relationships, since the file typically names the heirs. In Illinois these matters were handled over time by probate courts, county courts, and the circuit courts, and the estate file — petition, will or letters of administration, bond, and inventory — is held by the Circuit Court Clerk.

• Many historic county probate records — will records, case files, and guardianship papers — are held by the IRAD depositories and listed in the State Archives’ Local Governmental Records database.
• Illinois, Wills and Probate Records, 1772–1999 ($) on Ancestry is name-searchable across many counties, and Illinois probate records are also free on FamilySearch.
• FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific township and year and are valuable substitutes where censuses or deeds are missing; several consecutive years can reveal when a young man came of age, moved, or died and left heirs.

• Early territorial and state personal-property and land-tax lists survive for many counties and are held by the IRAD depositories and the county offices, listed in the State Archives’ Local Governmental Records database.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — the Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and luxury taxes, which include Illinois.
• Early residents and taxpayers of the territorial period also appear in the published Territorial Papers of the United States, whose Illinois volumes cover 1809–1818.