In the Illinois State Archives: even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn

I've long been a fan of the federal census agricultural schedules, and been sorry that they aren't available after 1880. But there's good news for those genealogists with post-1880 Illinois farmers in the tree: the Illinois State Archives' regional archives depositories (previously blogged here in January and here in February) have "agricultural statistic [sic] schedules" for ten counties, which cover non-census years and some well after 1880. Please note I haven't used these yet, so I'm going by the following description:

Schedules list 77 agricultural factors for each farmer in a township. Factors include: acres farmed; previous year’s crop yield; acres of pasture, woodland, uncultivated land, and city real estate owned by each farmer; the number of the various types of livestock owned, died, and killed; the amount of dairy products sold; the amount of wool shorn; the number of pounds of honey produced; with township summaries.

If that doesn't have you drooling, you're an impostor, not a genealogist. Most importantly, I suspect these will be reports of the actual farmers, not just landowners -- if that guess is true, this could be a gold mine for those researching transitory tenant farming families.

Counties available in their respective IRAD repositories and dates:

In northern Illinois, Carroll (1910-1912) , and Ogle (1891-1893).
In central Illinois, Christian (1881-1896), Henry (1877-1881), Macon (1878-1883), Macoupin (1881-1910), Montgomery (1877-1893), and Woodford (1877-1897).
In southern Illinois, Marion (1877-1878) and Williamson (1877-1886).

These came from the county clerks, so if you're working a county not listed above, perhaps they retain those records in a back room or basement somewhere. It can't hurt to ask.

Illinois Civil and Congressional Township Maps

Woops -- I should have posted on this months ago. (Hat tip to Melissa Barker in the Transitional Genealogists forum for getting the ball rolling about maps the other day.) There's a central although well-hidden on line resource for maps of each Illinois county showing townships. If you're visiting in person, you have a good chance of finding such a map at the courthouse or library, one that will also include roads and landmarks, as I did in northwestern Illinois' Whiteside County last fall. If you're visiting virtually, you can get there in six easy steps:

(1) Visit the Illinois State Archives regional depositories page, maintained by the office of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.

(2) On the left-hand menu, click on the second tab down for "IRAD region map."

(3) That will bring up a colorful map of Illinois divided into seven regions, each festooned with the initials of the depository university. Click on your region of choice.

(4) That will bring up a close-up map of the region and its counties. Click on your county of choice.

(5) That will bring up a "_____ County Fact Sheet." Enjoy the facts; don't get too focused; but then scroll down a few screens to a thumbnail outline map of the county with subdivisions, which are the townships. (Hey, it's a big thumbnail.)

(6) Click on the thumbnail and presto, you have a printable map of the county and its townships. And when I say townships, I mean BOTH KINDS, the civil townships (with names you are or soon will become familiar with) and the congressional townships, with names like T36N R5E in La Salle County, which due to rivers that disobey the rectangular survey system, is not quite the same as the civil township of Northville.

Drilling a little deeper in the Illinois State Archives online

Anyone with any research interest in Illinois at all has probably come across, and been appropriately grateful for, the three crown-jewel databases in the Illinois State Archives web site maintained by the secretary of state: the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index (1763-1900) and the Illinois Statewide Death Index (1916-1950) and the Illinois Statewide Death Index (pre-1916 but not done yet either). But if you go direct to these treasure troves (which include information on obtaining the original records), which I just made it easy for you to do (d'oh!), you'll miss some other goodies. The archives also has eleven online indexes of Illinois veterans starting with the War of 1812, plus an index of public domain land tract sales, and servitude and emancipation records 1722-1863.

But wait, there's more. For reasons best known to the politicians, many Illinois archival records are distributed around the state in 7 different IRADs (Illinois Regional Archives Depositories). The full list of holdings is in a PDF document here, but most of those you have to go see in person. What's even more helpful is that a selection of these has been indexed on line -- scroll down the main database page to the end, where you will find indexes to such gems as Shelby County Circuit Court Case Files 1828-1871, McLean County Will Records 1838-1940, Ogle County Naturalization Papers (County Court) 1878-1933, Sangamon County Guardian's Case Files 1825-1901, Chicago City Council proceedings 1833-1871, and... but you get the idea. Check it out and you may get lucky. I did.