Illinois Genealogy Resources
Illinois Manuscript Collections
- Blumenson, Martin. The Patton Papers, 1940-45, V. II.
Boston: Houghton Miflin Company, 1974.
- Draper Manuscripts. Collected in the nineteenth
century by Lyman Copeland Draper. The variety of the collection
includes correspondence, interview notes, extracts from
newspapers and other published sources, muster rolls, and
transcripts of official documents and research notes for the
western Carolinas and Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the entire
Ohio River valley, and parts of the Mississippi River valley.
The collection is available on 134 reels of microfilm, which is
owned by numerous libraries in the country. To access the
collection, consult Josephine L. Harper, Guide to the Draper
Manuscripts. Madison, Wisconsin: State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, 1983.
- Index to the
85,000+ documents in the George Rogers Clark Papers
- J. Nick Perrin Collection at the Illinois State
Archives in Springfield. Has some of the very earliest records
in Illinois. The collection is comprised of over 5,000 documents
relating to the French, British, and American regimes at Cahokia
and to early St. Clair County at Belleville, dating from 1737 to
1850. A 1737 marriage contract is one of the earliest items in
this collection. Births and deaths (1840-58) are also included.
Land claims, tax records, road petitions, registers of slaves
and free negroes, and probate records are only a few of the
multitude of historically important documents in the Perrin
Collection.
- Kaskaskia Manuscripts. Another significant collection
for Illinois research at the Illinois State Archives. The
records, which begin in 1708, are almost entirely notarial
transactions. They include, among other agreements,
acknowledgments of debt, marriage contracts, and land sales.
Some clerk of court registers have been included in the notary's
files. If a notary was unavailable, a priest might draft
documents to be filed with the notary's records.