Illinois genealogy?

Question

What links are there?

Answer 1

Are you looking for Chicagoland or downstate? There's a difference and the first place to start for Chicago is http://www.ancestry.com and http://www.familysearch.org

If you're looking for downstate, then you want to start with the Illinois Secretary of State databases. They're not as good for Cook County because the fire in 1871 wiped out the majority of records for the first 80 years. http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/a...

After that, go to the ILGenWeb sites. They have records for individual counties that aren't found elsewhere on the web. http://www.ilgenweb.org

Finally, the Newberry Library in Chicago (it is a private library, so you have to pay to enter...but it's the Disneyland of genealogy) and the Allen County Library in Fort Wayne IN are the largest holders of records for the region. And you'll want to spend a few days at the LDS Family History Center in Wilmette and the National Archives Records Center at 75th and Pulaski in Chicago.  You'll also find quite a bit of good information at the Harold Washington Library downtown. For anyone who was Catholic, go to the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago or the individual parishes. For cemetery records, go to the individual cemetery's offices. Lutheran and Episcopal churches in the state are also a wealth of information.

Answer 2

http://ilgenweb.net/

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/depart...

There are many others, but I've gotten a lot of info and other links from these two.

Edit: The 2nd link doesn't seem to work from here, but apparently it's the same as one of the links in the first answer. Anyway, the first answer provided you with some good links. There are some really interesting websites for different counties as well, but as I said, they can be accessed from one of the links listed above.