FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Illinois

Welcome to the Illinois WikiProject! We're delighted you found this page, and hope you'll be part of our team!

There are 102 counties in Illinois currently, plus one county (Dane), that no longer exists. Pages have already been created for every county, and headings for a basic outline of record types have been added.

Please add whatever you know about the records available for counties and/or communities and cities in Illinois. Working together, we can all benefit from the knowledge of community members on the Wiki.

If you have questions, or need some guidance on what to add or how to do so, feel free to contact the project leader or other team members.


 * Lise Embley, Project Leader
 * Thomas MacEntee, Project Manager Lise Embley, Illinois Moderator

Current Tasks in need of volunteers:

 * County boxes
 * Courthouse images. I'll do this one. Murphynw 23:50, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Origin of county name, info, pictures. This information is available on the County Fact Sheets at the IRAD web site. The site also provides a basic historical timeline for the county, and links to Illinois State Archive databases relevant to that county. Additional information may be available at Wikipedia.
 * I uploaded all remaining county maps. Murphynw 21:40, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Historic Population Charts    I can do this one  Jane
 * Quick Date boxes
 * Public Library addresses and website link. Use PublicLibraries.com and/or internet searches.  Check library collections for "Local History" room or collections, or on-line obituary index, etc.
 * List and link to each county's FamilySearch Center page in wiki.
 * Churches in the towns and cities of IIllinois -- This is a Google Task -- We need to identify churches, current and historical, in the towns and cities of Illinois..
 * County Histories -- Add a list of known publications or links about the history of each county. See Williamson County, Illinois as an examples. Sources to check for counties histories include Google Books, HeritageQuest, Family History Archive, and Internet Archive. (others?)
 * Check LookAtIllinois web site for digitital galleries from Illinois public libraries. Collections often include publications of interest to genealogists.
 * Check Illinois Digital Archive for relevant collections.There is currently no way to search by county, but will be in an upcoming (2012?) software upgrade. Browse collections and look at city names, figure out which county, then incorporate into county page content, e.g., Oak Ridge Cemetery Internment Records on the Sangamon County page, Polo Area Cemetery Records of Ogle, Lee, Carroll, and Whiteside County) on the Ogle, Lee, Caroll, and Whiteside County pages.
 * Cross link to information on ILGenWeb pages.
 * For each county, identify probate record books available through Illinois Probate Records, 1819-1970.
 * Newspapers in the towns and cities of Illinois -- Locating and copying the list of newspapers available in the Illinois Newspaper Project for each city or town to their respective page, then adding links to the microfilm numbers and/or digital versions.
 * Add Midwestern States Forum badge to every county page. See template below.

Contributors
Project Leader -- Lise Embley

Team members -- Danielle Batson, Nathan Murphy, Joan Healey, Patricia N. Hardesty, Marilyn Markham, Laurie Hillier, Linda Turner, Jason Harrison, Beth Taylor

Project members: you can also add User WikiProject Illinois to your user page to identify yourself as a member of the project and add your name to the Category:WikiProject Illinois participants.

Navbox

 * Illinois - navbox with links to Illinois-related articles

General

 * Infobox U.S. County - infobox to be used on county pages
 * Midwestern States Research Forum - to be added to every Illinois county page