Cook County, Illinois Records Now Available Online

Last September, I wrote a brief article that stated (in part), "Genealogists researching Cook County, Illinois ancestors will be interested to learn that many of the records they seek will soon be available online." Anyone who has been waiting for those records will be pleased to learn that the prediction has come true: birth certificates, marriage licenses and death certificates are now online.

The Genealogy Unit of the Cook County Clerk's Bureau of Vital Records provides non-certified versions of birth, death, and marriage records for the purpose of genealogical research. Records found on the site are for Chicago and Cook County, dating back to 1872.

NOTE: The Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871, destroyed all Cook County vital records prior to that date. After some rebuilding, record keeping resumed in 1872.

The site contains:

• Birth certificates that are 75 years or older (before today's date in 1933);
• Marriage certificates that are 50 years or older (before today's date in 1958);
• Death certificates that are 20 years or older (before today's date in 1988).

You might note that the web site states, "More than 6 million of the 8 million genealogy records are already searchable. And we will continue to add more as we bring our database up to date." In other words, not all the records are online just yet.

The marriage licenses show the groom’s name, bride’s name, the officiant’s name, date of marriage, place of marriage, date of issuance, and date filed with the Cook County Clerk’s office. The marriage records do not normally show the names of the parents. Also note that the marriage records show the date the license was filled out, not the date of the marriage, which usually was a few days later. In a few cases where the bride or groom got "cold feet" at the last minute, there is a possibility that the license was issued but the marriage never took place.

The records are not free, however; each record costs $15, plus a credit card fee of $1.75 will be charged for your total order. Once you pay for the record(s) you want, you will be able to view the original records (not transcriptions) on your computer screen. You can also save the images to a hard drive or print them on a local printer.

The Cook County, Illinois, records are available now at: http://www.cookcountygenealogy.com.

My thanks to Maureen Brady for telling about about this valuable new resource.

Comments

[Mike St. Clair]

It's great that they have digitized these, but if they've done it in such a way as to cost anywhere close to $15 per record, they should not have done it themselves. I'm afraid they have priced themselves out of the market and will not find many takers. I suspect any number of existing commercial vendors to genealogists would have done this project without cost to Cook County, and the price to end users would have been dramatically less. I'm afraid there is more bad than good in this announcement.

[Josephine Welsch]

And to think, I just sent in to the VITAL RECORDS DEPT. in Springfield,Ill. for copies of originial Death Certificates at the cost of $10.00, each I had 10 of them to verify 10X10=100.00,If I had waited for this Illinois web-site I would have paid 10X15= 150.00.Boy did I save some money.
P.S.No credit card fee, I sent a check.

[Russell Ridout]

As far as I understand it, they are the only source for these records, so to some extent the cost is irrelevant. I am surprised that they had the staffing levels to cope with the task in a short period. Searchers should bear in mind though that this is still a work in progress - from their website "More than 6 million of the 8 million genealogy records are already searchable. And we will continue to add more as we bring our database up to date."
There is no indication as to timescale, or what records have been scanned and indexed so far, so any search is a bit hit or miss at present.

[Denise Wells]

Well, I've just searched for my mother, father, my mother's brother, my father's brother and not found one of them in the new site. And I tried numerous ways of searching for them. Not there. And they were all born in Cook COunty. I have my mother's and father's birth certificates. My mother born in Cook County in 1907. My father born in 1906, and my father's brother born in 1915. My mother's brother was born in Cook County in 1904. Nothing. Nada.

[Sharon]

This site is good (free)if you use it only as an index. But, I, too, have found many missing names that I already have the documents. So it is not perfect. Another problem is that in the marriage records the date is that of the license, not the actual marriage. I should know as my own record gives a date of August 1957 and the last time I checked we were married in September!
The marriage records also list only the bride OR groom. But one way around this is if you find a possible match to bride or groom, copy the file number and date and search that way. I have found a couple of 'unknowns' this way.

[Mirtyanne]

I am disappointed that they do not give more information. How do I know that is the correct record. I am not sending any money unless I know for sure it is my family. My family has common names. They could at least have given a spouse's name.
Shouldn't some of these records be available through the State Archives?

[GMF]

When any govrnmental bureaucracy gets involved in a project one can usually anticipate high fees for access to vital data. It would be interesting to see a real in depth study to show whether such fees are necessary or are they just anothe money making scheme.

[Keith]

Never fear! I understand that two other sources will also be taking on these records:

First, Ancestry.com will put them on its site. While still not "free", such records will be at least searchable unlimitedly (is that a word?). Check out Ancestry.com's CEO's letter for this information http://tgn.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=121

Second, Family Search is doing the birth certificates ALREADY. They at least will be FREE! Check out http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/projects/current_projects.jsf?pname=currentProjects

[Keith]

Never fear! I understand that two other sources will also be taking on these records:

First, Ancestry.com will put them on its site. While still not "free", such records will be at least searchable unlimitedly (is that a word?). Check out Ancestry.com's CEO's letter for this information http://tgn.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=121

Second, Family Search is doing the birth certificates ALREADY. They at least will be FREE! Check out http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/projects/current_projects.jsf?pname=currentProjects

[Keith]

Never fear! I understand that two other sources will also be taking on these records:

First, Ancestry.com will put them on its site. While still not "free", such records will be at least searchable unlimitedly (is that a word?). Check out Ancestry.com's CEO's letter for this information http://tgn.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=121

Second, Family Search is doing the birth certificates ALREADY. They at least will be FREE! Check out http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/projects/current_projects.jsf?pname=currentProjects

[Linda]

Mike said: "It's great that they have digitized these, but if they've done it in such a way as to cost anywhere close to $15 per record, they should not have done it themselves. I'm afraid they have priced themselves out of the market and will not find many takers. I suspect any number of existing commercial vendors to genealogists would have done this project without cost to Cook County, and the price to end users would have been dramatically less. I'm afraid there is more bad than good in this announcement"

You've got to remember that these records are of interest to more than genealogists. The records office is there to accomodate requests from the public for these record for non-genealogical reasons as well. Many people are looking for one record only and $15 is reasonable. I think it would be WRONG to have a genealogy commercial vendor do it for free to Cook County and then retain ownership of the digitized records. Then, some other vendor comes in their handling the fragile original records again and it becomes an endless cycle. I think deals like Ancestry's deal with NARA stinks. I'm guessing Cook County has sold the records to Ancestry which is the correct thing to do so that Cook County, unlike NARA, has ownership of the records and recovers some of the cost and keeps the volume of hits on their system to a managable level. It also helps them recover some of their costs. We can only hope that TGN doesn't mess up the import of the records like they have from at least one other agency.

I also point out that Ancestry have misled people in their announcement. They will NOT have all records up to 1988. That would violate the Illinois law for birth and marriage records. They will have the same set Cook County has. I verified this with Cook County records after TGN made their announcement that they would have birth, marriage and death records through 1988.

[Athena]

I doubt that Cook County has "priced themselves out of the market"; the records office processes thousands of requests a month at the same price. This way, you don't have to wait in queue for a clerk to find and copy your record.

I don't have a problem paying $15 a copy for the right record but the index for this collection is so primitive that you can't be sure which one you want. It's misleading to call these "genealogy" records when the index doesn't support basic genealogical searches.

I guess I've been spoiled by the online birth and death indexes for Califonia and Texas. I hope one of these other organizations will come up with a more usable index.

[Gerald Eberwein]

There was a farming scam in days past where a farmer would oft place a sickly or malformed piglet in a burlap or cotton sack (called a poke because buyers could poke the sack to cause the pig to squirm and squeal) and offer to sell it for a dime. Once home the buyer would learn the deal was not the bargain expected.

The Cook County and the Irish records system is much like that "pig in a poke" scheme. You get enough squeal and wiggle to know it's there, yet not enough to know if it's gonna' be productive or useful.

I don't mind paying to copy a record if I know it's what I need. I don't like paying to see if it's what I need; it usually isn't.

[Susan Zmrzel]

It's too bad Cook County did not follow in the footsteps of the state of Arizona. Go to their web page http://genealogy.az.gov/ and find the person you want. You can save the certificate to your computer or print it out. There is NO FEE.

The information found within these records was extracted from photo reproductions of the original certificates by volunteers from the Mesa Regional Family History Center, at no cost to the Department.

I belong to the TriState Genealogical Society in Bullhead City, AZ. Our project was to walk the cemeteries in Mohave County, take photos of the markers and post the information to Find A Grave. We also look up death certificates and linked them to their memorial page on Find A Grave. I would like to see genealogical societies all over do this project.

[Linda]

Susan...Yes, Arizona does have a wonderful site and as you stated, it was the efforts of a genealogy center that made it possible. I believe Arizona has to pay for the storage and maintainence of the system. With tight budgets, I wouldn't count on it being free forever. Cook County has a huge amount of records compared to the whole state of Arizona.

One theory I have is that Cook County is digitizing all their records and allowing access to the genealogy data portion of the system. This would allow the release of additional records as they become elgible for release under law which will be beneficial both to the direct users of the site and the vendors such as Ancestry purchasing the information. Illinois is far more protective of individual's privacy than other states which I'm sure factors into their decisions too. As an Illinois native, I am glad that not just anyone can access my birth and marriage certificates, especially online.

I don't think we have any "rights" to access records for no fee. I also think it is up to the governing bodies to determine the best way to distribute the information to the public under the laws of the state. I'm always appalled when I see detailed birth information for living individuals (i.e. California, Minnesota) online in these times of identity theft but that is up to the people and governing bodies of the state.

Gerald, there is no obligation to purchase records based on what you see online. Cook County provides the index as a service, not a scheme to get money so your comparison is unfair.

[Joe]

Dick,
Your readers may find this article useful:

Online Death Certificates - includes links to collections of online scanned death certificates
http://genrootsblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/online-death-certificates-updated.html

[JudyE]

I and 99% of my family were born, married and died in Cook County and many records are not in the database. I wonder in what order the records are being copied. The years seem to skip around. I found my father's death certificate (1972) but not my grandfather's (1952).

[William Bernard Thiel D.Ed.]

Birth records for (Chicago) Cook County are kept in two different places, similar to the State of Illinois who has Births prior to 1916 at the County Level and after 1916 at the State Level.

Does this group of records have both groups of records brought together, or are we able to only get the half stored by the Board of Health.

Bill Thiel

[Linda]

Judy.....Unless you and your family were born before 1933, you will not be in the database. Birth certificate information in the last 75 years is not allowed to be given to anyone but the named person and their parents on the birth certificate. I've also had relatives that have lived in Cook County but aren't on the death certificate list because they died in a hospital or other facility outside of Cook County. Could that be the case of your grandfather?

See http://www.cookcountygenealogy.com/MoreInfo.aspx. It sounds like they are still working on the database. See the date ranges of the different types of records in Dick's original post.

[Bob Blevens]

For marriages, the state has a nice link that offers free info (unless you want it certified). It covers the period up to 1900, & even has pre-fire info for Chicago (rebuilt from newspaper files).

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/marriage.html

[Marilyn]

I just used this site Friday. The index is not as good as the old site and you don't get enough information to make a guess if this is the correct person or not. I will not be using it. I will still use the index here:http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html and order from this site for $5.00: http://www.chicagogenealogy.com/fhc.html

If a NON certified copy costs $15 what must a certified copy cost?

[Karen]

All these suggestions to use other repositories miss the point: We are talking about records that are not available elsewhere. The only source for marriage or birth records for the depression or war-time eras, periods that are significant for many families, is the Cook County clerk.

Whether something is too expensive is a relative thing. In this case $15 is about average for vital records but it's a bit high in this case given that they have such a poor index. Also, it costs $15 to get a printed copy in person or by mail; I would think they would want to give some kind of discount to users who do the searching and printing themselves. If they expect to cover the costs of development and maintenance with these fees, they will definitely need to reconsider.

The real problem here is the quality of the index. It doesn't appear that whoever designed this system did very much research online record systems from other states and counties first. Given that the information users need to identify the right individual has been omitted, it is misleading to label this a "genealogical" database. It's simply a listing of names and dates of events. That can be helpful for some but largely insufficient for most.

[LDrewitz]

There are two wonderful ladies in Illinois that can get you birth marriage and death records either from Springfield (where one lady is based) or NARA up north (where the other lady is based). Last time I checked, they were charging about $4 per cert, you got confirmation that it was the correct party AND it was in your hand within a week! They deal in the whole STATE of Illinois - not just Cook county...

See:
www.mollx.com or www.Chicagogenealogy.com

In my YEARS dealing with them, never had a snafu - never had a bad cert - each lady goes above and beyond the request to make sure you get what you came for.

L Drewitz

[Cynthia]

Many Chicago/Cook records are available on film through the Family History Library system. For example, Chicago Birth Registers and Certificates, 1871-1922; Cook County Marrige Licenses, 1871-1920; and Chicago Death Certificates, 1878-1947. These films are available in Salt Lake or they can be ordered in at any Family History Center. In the Chicago area, the Wilmette Family History Center holds a complete set of these films and they can be accessed any time the FHC is open. One caution, however. The certificate numbers for the death certificates from 1878-1915 repeat up to four times during the year and the FHLC does not make it clear, in all cases, which films to order. (The Wilmette FHC has developed a key to help choose the correct reels.) Marriage licenses up to 1900 are also available from IRAD at NEIU.

[Olivia]

Mirtyanne,What's your beef? What you wrote has been bugging me for two days now.

Personally, I have had excellent service from the "governmental bureaucracies" I have dealt with in the past 6 months. I have written for and received probably 20 vital records. With the fees they charge I would think they are barely covering their costs.

The fees for my ancestors' vital records have ranged from free to $2.00 to $14.00. I've received documents from the "governmental bureaucracies" of Great Britain, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California state, Los Angeles County, Santa Clara County, Contra Costa County, and San Francisco County in a very timely and efficient manner.

With San Francisco I went in person and was treated very nicely and the young man at the counter additionally gave me information on the history of the maintenance of vital records in SF County. Fascinating.

From Rhode Island and Massachusetts I have dealt with individuals who have given me his/her names and I feel free to write back with an additional requests I may have.

Remember that we are citizens of a republic and the vital records are records of our fellow citizens and as citizens we play our parts and the "bureaucracy" is accountable to us. With a corporation, the interest is private and there is no accountability at the citizenship level just at the commercial level.

Posted by: Mirtyanne | July 06, 2008 at 08:02 AM

When any govrnmental bureaucracy gets involved in a project one can usually anticipate high fees for access to vital data. It would be interesting to see a real in depth study to show whether such fees are necessary or are they just anothe money making scheme.

[Sharon Meeker]

For those who feel that the Cook County Vital Records indexes are inadequate and/or that the fee of $15 per record is too high: you may want to make your opinions and suggestions known to the people who set these policies. There is a place on the Cook County Genealogy site where you can "contact us." A polite explanation of the problems with this site by many users may eventually have the desired effect. In any event, we can be certain that there will be NO improvement UNLESS we tell Cook County about our concerns. The comments on Dick Eastman's site are very interesting for us to read, but we are preaching to the choir. I doubt that the Cook County Clerk's Office reads these comments.

The Cook County office may be expecting many more certificate orders than they will get, and they won't know why their sales expectations are not being met unless we tell them. As so many genealogists were quick to see the problems with the indexes, it is clear that Cook County did not ask for ideas from genealogists before they compiled the indexes and set the fees. They will have no idea what has gone wrong with their plan. It may be too late to go back and add more personal identifying information to the entries they have already posted, but there may be other solutions that would make the project more useful. At the least, they may be able to add identifying information (age, parents's names or whatever is appropriate) to the records they have not entered yet. If they cannot come up with a way to improve the indexes, then they may need to reduce the certificate fees significantly. Genealogists who have ancestors with common names will not buy certificate after certificate for $15 each trying to find the right one (especially since we do not yet know which records have not yet been indexed). If the fee were a lot lower, genealogists might buy multiple certificates in order to get the one they need.

Let's offer our opinions and ideas to the powers that be in Chicago so that this web site can meet the objectives of Cook County and of the genealogists who would like to use it.

[Joseph Kerr]

Most of the records you have were compiled by a nice little old lady who died on May 21, 1984, cant remember her name. But anyway what does it matter. You obviously didnt take into consideration how she would feel about the unreasonable fees. They are outrageous & well wrong. The should be public record after 72 years you crooked crooks. I've read all the legislation & bill drafts on the fees schedule. & a stricken passage read, "reasonable fees" to pretty much offset any expenses encured in the creation of the records. Well they are not reasonable, it is obvious you look to benifit off of other peoples familes poor record keeping abilities. Do me a favor try to research some names, like smith, or heres one that wouldnt sound to tricky noonan. Well guess what you cant now without paying thousands & thousands of dollars in fees just to find they were all a waste of your money, because it wasnt the right smith or jones. Don't exploit people. You want to raise money,hold a bake-sale or tellathon. And if you dont like the fees. I hate to say it but dont vote for ...well I got to go & cant find his name right now & hes lucky too. The guys name on the bill. Dont take advantage of people. The information should be free. But a reasonable fee, if it make sense (remember the smiths, jones & noonans....). You people are crooked crooks. I guess the Chicago area hasnt changed much. You people belong in washington.

[Mick]

Is this site still available, I have not been able to access it for many years.

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html