Chicago Illinois Genealogy

25/07/2025

Rare find at the Cook County Archives today. This is an 1891 Naturalization from the Circuit Court of Cook County that gives a date and place of birth. While the majority of these records before 1906 do not provide this detail, it just shows you it is worth pulling the record.

04/07/2025

My project this week was to review the Chicago High School Records (1879-1939) for West Division High, William McKinley High, English/Manual Training School, and Crane Technical School. These record books are located at the Chicago History Museum. Some of the pages included parents' names, father's occupation, where/when the students were born, year of study and grades.

03/07/2025

https://apnews.com/article/military-funeral-who-was-seven-missing-person-e68f7f66acff9f81439354d0fff13295

A veteran who died in Chicago without any recollection of their life has been memorialized in a funeral service with military honors.

17/06/2025

NEW! The Cook County Clerk's office has introduced a service for E-Certified Marriage Documents. Their website says you will get a Secure & Tamper Proof document instantly via email, protected with advanced encryption technology. I did a test, and it does ask for the applicants birth date, as well as the marriage date. So this would most likely only work for records when applications asked for birth dates (after 1968). Currently, it remains unclear if these documents are ok to be apostilled, but I will follow up with that shortly.
https://www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/vital-records/e-certified-documents

09/06/2025

Great podcast about a 1983 missing person's case in Elgin Illinois.

True Crime Podcast · Updated Biweekly · In May of 2024, Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley created the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Unit to take a fresh look at unsolved homicides and missing persons cases with the belief that dedicating re…

23/05/2025

I was at the Cook County Archives yesterday when this interview was being given by the clerk to the media about Pope Leo’s grandfather. 



CHICAGO — Pope Leo’s connection to Chicago is by now well known to the masses but long before he was born and raised in Dolton, his ancestors left the old world of Italy to begin a new life i…

08/05/2025

The parents of our new Pope, living in Dolton, Cook County, Illinois in the 1950 Census. Louis M Prevost and his wife Mildred (Martinez) are living with a foster son.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62308/records/222290288?_phcmd=u(%27https://www.ancestry.com/search/categories/35/?name=louis+m_prevost&searchMode=advanced&spouse=mildred_martinez&successSource=Search&queryId=cea1f47a-927e-41a9-a24b-36bb536a33d1%27,%27successSource%27)

05/05/2025

Here is a useful link about accessing records from Cook County IL for the dual citizenship process. This is from Reddit & it gives a very nice endorsement to us at Chicago Illinois Genealogy.(r/juresanguinis)

Explore this post and more from the juresanguinis community

04/04/2025

https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/news/local-news/private-robert-bryant-homecoming/

Private First Class Robert L. Bryant’s remains were brought home after 81 years, and his family and the community gathered to welcome him, with the procession closing Veteran’s Parkway …

13/03/2025

I just returned from another visit to the Cook County Vital Records office and the line was 60+ people deep at the time it opened at 9am. They are overwhelmed with the amount of certified record requests lately, and the manager told me that for older records, it is taking at least 3+ months to conduct a search. An important tip for those of you that need a record certified is to include a genealogy image from the FHL with the request, if you can find it. Having the document # and an image is very helpful since all older records are on city microfilm.

07/03/2025

Thanks to our client Rob for the testimonial. I worked with him for over a year to gather his documents so he could obtain dual citizenship in Italy.

15/01/2025

HOW TO FIND CHICAGO ORPHANAGE RECORDS

There are various locations in the Chicago area that have Chicago Orphanage Records that might contain admissions records for the child.  Below is a list of several collections or places to contact.