Chicago Genealogist Spring 2009

The bulk of the latest Chicago quarterly is occupied by another installment of Virginia Dick's translations of obituaries and news items from the German-language Illinois Staats Zeitung, including the discovery in March 1872 of the "carbonized remains" of Franz Heiselmann, a chimney sweep who died in the October 1871 Chicago Fire "when a burning house fell in on him on Division Street, from which he wanted to save a sick woman." The lingering aftermath of the fire plays a role in several of the excerpts.

In "Examination of Title," Craig Pfannkuche fills in the family facts around an old abstract of title from a property on the north side of 36th Place just west of Rockwell Street, including Corwith and Putman families.

You wish your ancestors stopped in Kane County, Illinois

This northern Illinois county, now a cluster of Chicago suburbs, is the only county I know where the county recorder has put its tract books on line. Tract books, in case you slept through that part of genealogy class, are property records organized by a particular tract of land. Not all counties have 'em, at least not back to the beginning.

Kane County's tract books consist of typed abstracts of property transactions -- to research the actual deeds you have to go there. And they're not indexed by name, so you need either to be really lucky (not me) or know exactly where your ancestor was (more specifically than just the township!). So it may or may not substitute for (or prepare for) a trip to the courthouse.

That's the beauty of property records -- they weren't created with us genealogists in mind. That's also the horror of them -- they weren't created with us in mind. Now, what I'd really like is to see the grantor-grantee indexes digitized!

See Any Chicago Address

Am I the only person who uses this valuable resource but keeps forgetting its internet location? CityNews Chicago's Property Search has a ton of data on any existing Chicago address, including year built, square footage, fire information, tax information, assessed value, usually a photo -- as well as the all-important political (excuse me, "civic footprint") information: elected representatives, precicnct, ward, police beat, community area, and judicial subcircuit. Some info dates back to 2002.

Of course, if you're trying to track Chicago folks from the 19th century, you'll want to visit the Newberry Library's Chicago Ancestors site, "tools" tab, where in addition to online city directory images from 1866, 1870, 1871, 1875, 1880, 1885, 1892, and 1900, you can use tools from the Chicago History Museum to check whether your target address has had a street name change, and how its numbering was altered in 1909.