Nuggets of history are buried in the archives of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County. And the clerk's office is looking for volunteers to help unearth some of those nuggets.
An indexing and preservation project, funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, is under way. The archives contain more than a half-million naturalization recordsfrom between 1906 and 1929, before the federal government took over keeping such records. And among the documents are some 400,000 Declarations of Intention, the first papers filed by people applying to become U.S. citizens.
The records, though, are difficult to search in their present state. Hence, the project. This looks like an excellent chance for genealogists to help preserve the sorts of records we all value.
You can find more information in an article by William Hageman published in the Chicago Tribune at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0720-titanicjul20,0,2634363.story
