Finding Parishes with ChicagoAncestors.org

The Newberry Library has just published ChicagoAncestors.org which lets you "discover the past by address" and I've used it a couple of times to successfully determine which Catholic parish a family attended.

Want to give it a try? First you'll need an address. You can obtain it from a number of sources including birth certificates, death certificates, and city directories.

Once you have the address, type it into the address box on the main page.

At the bottom of the results screen you will see "Religious Institutions." Click on the + next to "Roman Catholic Churches." You will then see the names of the parishes closest to the address along with their locations on the map. If you click a parish name you will get information on the history of the church and Family History Library film numbers for any records that have been filmed.

Wonderful new tool!

Website Updates in Progress

Some of you may be wondering why I'd upload my new website pages when they're not quite done. Have to say, I'm wondering that myself at this point! No, seriously, I've been working on them on and off all summer, pushing hard the last few days to get them done so I can move on to other projects, and knowing that they're "out there" gives me the drive to wrap things up even though my brain is tired . . .

It's not hard to find Chicago vital records, but it's certainly not straightforward. There are a lot of ifs and thens and I've been trying to pull them together into once place while at the same time keeping things as simple as I can. Quite a challenge.

It'll probably take me a few more days to iron things out and then I'll let the pages sit and go back for a "final" tweak sometime before the year's over.