Specific good news for Illinois and Indiana researchers

FamilySearch announced on the 16th increases in two online collections of great interest to those with Midwestern ancestors. But the official information about the collections is somewhat incomplete and inaccurate.

"Indiana, Marriages, 1811-1959," is reported to be 82% complete, with material from all counties except Scott, Shelby, Spencer, Starke, Switzerland, Tipton, and Vermillion.

In fact, there are substantial numbers of indexed marriages in all 92 Indiana counties. All appear to offer images, but some were unavailable when I clicked them.

"Illinois, County Marriages, 1820-1934," is reported to include both index and images, 63% complete, with no names of counties covered (earlier iterations had named them).

I did not see any images. Counties with index entries are

Adams, Alexander,
Bond, Boone, Brown,
Champaign, Christian, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Coles, Crawford,
DeWitt, Douglas,
Edgar, Edwards, Effingham,
Ford, Franklin,
Gallatin, Grundy,
Hancock, Henderson, Henry,
Iroquois,
Jackson, Jefferson, Jo Daviess,
Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Knox,
Livingston,
Marion, Massac, McHenry, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Moultrie,
Ogle,
Pike,
Randolph, Rock Island,
Shelby,
Warren, White, and Williamson.

Notably missing at this point are the big ones including Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, Peoria, and Winnebago. Where the two overlap, it would be interesting to compare the coverage of this new index to that of the Illinois State Archives' venerable "Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900" (also a volunteer project), but I haven't done that. If you do post such a thing on your blog, kindly add a comment with the link!



Harold Henderson, "Specific good news for Illinois and Indiana researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]