Early Illinois Marriage Records

Nicholas Russell Murray

Hunting For Bears Genealogy Society collects and maintains large databases of early (predominantly pre 1900) marriage records from all fifty states. We are currently processing these records and will have them on line as soon as they are ready. We do two things with these records: One, we publish these records in County Marriage Record Books, (over 2,000 to date) and on CDs. We no longer publish on microfiche but have a fairly complete inventory of our collection up to 1980. Two, surname searches of these large computer databases have been available to individuals since the late 1960s via the U. S. Postal Service and now e-mail. We search our marriage indexes of on a state by state basis and provide the results via e-mail or computer printout. The Hunting For Bears marriage data collection as of about 1980, covering 16 states, was bundled with Family Tree Maker(c) and sold in the tens of thousands and was crucial in making FTM(c) the most popular genealogical software in the world. The same collection was included in Ancestry's(c) initial data searches, playing a significant role in its rise to the world's premier genealogy data search engine. That was the 1980 collection, the 2010 collection dwarfs it in comparison. This book is part of that 2010 collection. It is maintained in a data base structure to provide the highest information density. Each marriage is contained in one line. Each party in the union is included in the alphabetical listing. Using the records in a database format and listing both participants in the alphabetical sort was so unique in 1960 that the U.S. Government has granted Hunting For Bears a (c)copyright on the collection in both electronic and print format. Several things we are considering in the immediate future are; e_books to buy, loan or free downloads, books available through instant publication, and books on line. Oh, the name and logo, Russell, as Nick was called in his youth, loved puns. The newspaper genealogy column that he began writing in 1951, Hunting Your Forbearers, quickly became Hunting For Bears and the bear and hunter logo was created.