Searching Chicago City Directories at Footnote.com

Chicago city directories, seventy-three volumes covering 1843 to 1923, are available on Footnote.com and because they are fully searchable, they offer plenty of research possibilities to those who learn how to easily access them. Here's my approach:

1) Log into Footnote.com and select BROWSE, NEWS AND TOWN RECORDS, CITY DIRECTORIES, ILLINOIS, CITY DIRECTORIES--CHICAGO. If you want to search every year available, scroll down and type in your key word(s) in the "Search within: News and Town Records » City Directories » Illinois » City Directories - Chicago IL" box. If you want to search a specific year, read on.

2) Click on the year you want to search. Then, type the surname you're looking for into the "Search within" box at the bottom of the screen. Scroll through the results until you find one that is close to the name you're looking for. "1843 » Rhines, Henry (p. 23)" will bring you to a page that begins with Rhines, Henry. If you were looking for "Roth" or even "Smith," you could navigate to the Rhines page and then use the small thumbnail navigation bar at the bottom of the screen to quickly locate the page you really needed. The rollover feature makes that easy to do.

But don't just limit your searches to names. Over the Christmas holiday, I had the pleasure of starting a small curiosity project of my own--trying to find out more about a Boston violin maker named John S. Allen--and searching known business and home addresses allowed me to find others who were working and/or living at the same addresses--though not necessarily working in the same business or living in the same apartment. I also tried searching "violin maker" and "violinmaker" (they brought up different entries) to see who else might have been working in the city in the same year.

Two Sets of Death Certificates--1908-1915

Between 1908 and 1915, there are two sets of Chicago death certificates listed in the Family History Library Catalog. One group (the largest) is organized by "certificate number"--the number you find in the online index. The other group is organized by "register number"--the number you find in the Chicago Death Index, 1871-1933, a microfilm index.

So, what's the difference between the two groups? In some cases, but not necessarily all, the record found in the register number group appears to be a copy of the original death certificate. The writing is neat and in one hand.

However, I don't think all of the records in the register number group are copies. I was unable to find a death record on a certificate number film today--it seemed to be missing--and when I located the corresponding record on the register number film, the record looked to be original.

Chicago City Directories Online

More are more Chicago city directories are appearing online.

A number of years are available in PDF format at www.chicagoancestors.org (Look under the "Tools" tab.

Directories are also available at www.footnote.com. This is a subscription site, but you can access it for free at Family History Centers that have the portal set up on their computers.

A list of some online Chicago directories is available here:

http://chicagogenealogy.com/chicago-city-directories.html

Parent Names on Pre-1910 Infant Death Records

Chicago death certificate blanks didn't have a place to record parent names until 1910 but if you find an infant in the index under "Unknown SURNAME" it's very likely that the actual record will read "Child of Given Name and Given Name SURNAME." If you're looking for infants who were born and died between census years, it's worth checking the death records for unknown infants.

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.

1900 Census: Background Information

An article called "How the Census Was Taken" appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 21 Aug 1900. Here are some things I learned from it:

• The census was to reflect the population as it was on June 1. Anyone who died during the fifteen days "succeeding" to that was to be counted. Births later than June 1 weren't to be recorded and individuals who were in jail on June 1 but released before the enumerater arrived were to be recorded as prisoners.
• Thirty interpreters were used in areas with languages other than English.
• Enumerators were paid by Washington according to the number of names they recorded.
• Enumeration took 15 days but "more than double that time" was spent on corrections and complaints.
• Complaints included enumerators skipping hotel guests; a number of men were put in charge of investigating and correcting returns

Another article stated that enumerators wore badges and that the census books were 2 ft x 1 ft.