Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Cook County Vital Records Update

Earlier this year, the Cook County Clerk launched a website that permits index searches for Cook County, Illinois vital records. The indexes are not yet complete. Additional data is being added regularly.

An update regarding the website appeared in the October issue of the Newsletter of the Chicago Genealogical Society (vol. 41, no. 3). The article reports that Jan Meisels Allen, Chairperson of the Public Records Access Monitoring Committee, has spoken to both a supervisor and a senior public information officer in the Cook County Vital Records Department. Jan learned that it is expected to take more than six months for the remainder of the records to be added.

What is currently available? According to the article, the following records are available now: birth records for 1916-1933; marriage records for 1930-1937, 1940, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1950-1958; and death records for 1915-1946, 1949-1957, 1960-1988.

The Cook County vital records website can be found at:
http://www.cookcountygenealogy.com/