Cook county illinois birth certificates

If you can't find a match, ask the Cook County Clerk's Office to search for you. Print the Genealogical Request Form and mail it along with the specified fee to the address on the form. It's important to understand, though, that a large number of births went unreported and there may not be a certificate to be found. Locate the Record If you have a film number for a birth record up through , the certificate should be available online for viewing and downloading by visiting a family history center or an affilliate library. If you have a folder number only , the record may or may not be available online.

Check availability before making a trip to a family history center. To do that, follow the steps below for finding the records at a family history center. If you get to a point where there is a camera with a key next to the difital folder number, the record will be available on FamilySearch. If there is only a magnifying glass or no icon at all, it will not be available on FamilySearch and you will need to get the matching record from the Cook County Clerk's Office.

Once the page loads, locate the film number or digital folder number.

U.S. Vital Records Online - State by State Listing

Use Control or Command F to find the number; the entries sort by title which can make it difficult to locate a number manually. If you've confirmed availability ahead of time, there should be a camera icon next to the film number. If so, click the film number. If not, read the note at the bottom of this section. If you're using a family history center computer, you'll want to take a USB drive. If you forget, an easy way to assure access to them once you're home is to upload them to the Memories section of your FamilySearch account.

Note: For birth certificates up through , the camera icon should not have a key over it if you are accessing the page through a Family History Center's network. If there is a magnifying glass icon next to the film or folder number, but no other icon, the record is indexed, but isn't available through FamilySearch. This should not be the case with birth certificates through , but may be the case with the delayed birth certificates.

Woman Charged For Misspelled Birth Certificates – CBS Chicago

If so, you will need to obtain a copy of the record from the Cook County Clerk's Office. In the past, researchers retrieved the death certificates through from FamilySearch microfilm. It's also possible to get these records from the Cook County Clerk's Office, but unless a certified copy is needed, there's usually no reason to do so.

If you can't find what you need there, you can submit a search request through Cook County's Genealogy Online website. For , look for birth register pages and be aware, when searching the indexes, that many entries do not include given names. For , get certificates from FamilySearch microfilm. For forward, get certificates from the Cook County Clerk's office or website.

Many births before went unreported. If you can't find a record created at the time of birth and the person lived into the s, look for a delayed birth certificate. Birth Records Available through FamilySearch Chicago Birth Registers, About these records The birth registers created by clerks copying information from birth certificates "returns of birth" onto pre-numbered lines in large register books.

This method provided a systematic way of assigning certificate numbers and created an easy-to-skim list of reported births. The certificates are original records, filled out by a person in attendance at the birth, usually a physician or midwife; the registers are derivative. Although the information should be the same in both, the potential for copying errors or shortened entries a country, for example, rather than a town and country, for a parent's place of birth , means researchers should always seek out the original certificates.

How to Get a Birth Certificate in Cook County

They are available from forward. Indexing A free index to these records is available at FamilySearch. Another index Cook County Birth Index, is available on microfiche. However, if you don't find an entry in the birth index, it is possible, and worthwhile, to search the birth registers directly. Doing this can help you find births that were recorded under an unexpected spelling or births that were registered but missed by the index rare, but possible. Arrangement The arrangement varies depending on the time period. Entries were probably made in the order that the returns were received and they are not alphabetical by surname or chronological by birth day.

In the early registers, most of the entries for a particular month are together, but entries for other months will be intermingled.

For example, if a January birth was reported in March, it would appear with the March births. This does not seem to be the case with the later volumes. The later volumes have alphabetic sections for a particular time span often six months. In other words, a volume might begin with all of the "A" surname births January, followed by a blank page or two, followed by all of the "A" surname births for February, etc. Information generally found on these records register number child's name child's sex no.

Tips for searching the birth registers 1 Each birth register film may include two or three different register volumes. When you look up the film number, make a note of which film item you will be looking at. Scroll through to the right item, locate the surname letter group and the correct month, and then use the register number to find the correct entry. If you approach your search in this way, it is important to remember that in the early registers, births may not have been recorded in the month that they occurred.

For example, it is possible to find a January births recorded on pages which have mostly February births, etc. For example, you might find "J" entries between the "B" and "C" entries, if that was where the clerk found a blank page to record the "overflow. About these records The Chicago birth certificates, sometimes titled "Return of a Birth," were filled out by someone who attended the birth, usually a physician or midwife, and returned to the county clerk.

Some certificates mention a penalty fee for not filing a birth report, but even so, many early Chicago and Cook County births weren't registered. In many cases there may not be a birth certificate to be found. Arrangement Certificates are arranged numerically by a certificate number that can be found in the Cook County Birth Index or the Chicago Birth Registers.

When this is the case, it's likely that the first group is for Jan-Jun and that the second group is for Jul-Dec or Jan-Apr, May-Aug, Sep-Dec, if there are three divisions , however this rule doesn't always hold true.

Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificates, 1871-1940

During the teens, for example, December birth certificates are sometimes found in the first group of films for the following year and when this happens, all of the months may shift, meaning that an April certificate might fall into the second group of certificate numbers rather than into the first.

There are a number of reasons why you might not be able to easily find a Chicago birth certificate: 1 The birth might not have been reported when the child was born.

If the individual lived into the s, consider checking the Chicago Delayed Birth Index. If you have a birth month and year from the census, for example and you think the surname might be spelled incorrectly in the index, try searching entries in the Chicago Birth Registers, These pages can serve as an alternate index and they are available on microfilm and online at FamilySearch.

If you can't find a birth certificate, look for alternate sources of birth information.


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Newspaper Notices though very few births seem to have been mentioned in the Chicago papers Baptismal records School records check Chicago Board of Education proceedings at the Harold Washington Library World War I draft registration cards available at Ancestry.

The Cook County Birth Index, is a microfiche index to some, but not all, births that occurred in Chicago and Cook County during those years. Format 83 microfiche. Why search this index? If you find an entry in the Cook County Birth Index, you can use the identification number to locate a birth register entry or a birth certificate. In other words, the birth was reported much later than it took place, probably in the s.

Check with the Cook County Clerk's office to see if the delayed certificate that you need is available. Lena Hanson might be in the index under "Hansen" or even "Hauson.

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Look for Adam Smith, Jr. It's a good way to check for unexpected spellings because births beginning with the same first letter of surname are grouped together by month and year. Chicago Delayed Birth Index, Delayed birth registration provided a way for births that weren't reported at the time of the event to be registered. Many people obtained delayed birth certificates to prove citizenship or to apply for Social Security or Railroad Retirement benefits.

If you are able to locate a copy of a delayed birth certificate, it may include notes on what documents were used to prove the birth. Chicago Board of Health. Chicago Deaths An alphabetical listing of Chicago and Cook County deaths obtained from documents returned to the clerk. The index was compiled by the Works Progress Administration, and is arranged alphabetically by surname.

The Board maintains vital statistics for Chicago only. Birth records from to the present and death records from to the present are available for a fee at the Board. Chicago Genealogical Society.


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Chicago Ancestor File: Records of over 10, Chicago residents contributed by more than 1, of their descendants, compiled and indexed by the Society. A copy can be obtained from the Society.