Illinois genealogy records

Births and deaths

Illinois tried several times before it got complete records. An 1819 law made physicians keep lists of births and deaths for their medical societies, but no public record. An 1843 law let a parent or next of kin swear to a birth or death before the county clerk, but because it was voluntary, the State Archives says virtually no birth and death records exist before 1877 except in a few scattered counties.

An 1877 act created the State Board of Health and had physicians and accoucheurs, as birth attendants were called, report births and deaths to the county clerk. Penalties were weak, so many events went unreported. In 1915 the state set up registration districts with local registrars who reported to both the county clerk and the State Board of Health, and death certificates were filed with the state from 1916.

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) issues uncertified genealogical copies. For a birth, the person's date of birth must be 75 years or more before the request, using its Application for Search of Birth Record Files. For a death, the death must be more than 20 years ago and not before 1916. For deaths before 1916, go to the county clerk or to the Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) that holds that county's records; the State Archives reference unit in Springfield does not supply pre-1916 copies.

The State Archives death indexes

The Pre-1916 Illinois Statewide Death Index is an ongoing project built from county clerks' death registers and certificates. Each entry gives the name, date and county of death, often the place within the county, age and sex, and the volume and page or certificate number, which is what you send the county clerk or IRAD. IRAD holds death records for slightly more than half of Illinois's 102 counties.

The 1916 to 1972 index lists death certificates filed with IDPH. A certificate from these years can give birth date and birthplace, father's name and birthplace, mother's maiden name and birthplace, occupation and the informant. The State Archives holds microfilm of certificates from 1916 to 1947, but you must visit its reference room to copy one; it will not mail or email copies. Otherwise order from IDPH or the county clerk.

Marriages

Since 1985 the Illinois State Genealogical Society and the State Archives have built the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index for marriages before 1901, using county clerks' marriage registers and licenses and county society publications. It now holds more than one million marriages, but it does not cover every county and year, so check its list of counties and date spans before concluding a marriage is missing.

Copies come from the county clerk, who is the official custodian, or from IRAD, which holds marriage records for more than seventy of the 102 counties. Include the details from the index in your request.

Census records

For 1810, when Illinois was a territory, the National Archives has schedules only for Randolph County, and a typescript of it is in the National Archives Catalog. Federal schedules survive from 1820 on. The 1890 census was almost all destroyed; one small Illinois fragment, Mound Township in McDonough County, survives.

Use 1850 and later censuses to get birthplaces for everyone in the household, then work back to the county of first settlement.

Land: the first sales

Illinois land was first sold out of the public domain: by federal land offices, by the state for lands the federal government had given it, and by the Illinois Central Railroad. The State Archives' Public Domain Land Tract Sales Database covers nearly 550,000 first sales of public land in Illinois, recorded by federal land office staff, state and local officials, and clerks of the Illinois Central Railroad. The records came to the State Archives in 1957 and can be searched by purchaser name.

If the price column says "warrant", the buyer paid with a military bounty land warrant. Registers for warrants from 1817 to 1819 give the warrant number and the veteran's unit, and those for 1847 to 1877 give the name of the original recipient, who may have sold the warrant to the buyer. The patent itself came later from the U.S. General Land Office, and those federal patents are now kept by the Bureau of Land Management. Later sales and mortgages are in county deed records.

Probate, courts and military records

Probate files are kept by county. The State Archives has put several county probate indexes online, among them Sangamon County probate case files from 1821 to 1906, Madison County from 1813 to 1903, Peoria County from 1825 to 1887 and McLean County wills from 1838 to 1940, along with circuit court, coroner's inquest, almshouse and naturalization indexes for some counties.

For soldiers, the State Archives has an Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls database, and separate databases of Illinois veterans of the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Mexican War and the Spanish American War.