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Wills, administrations, and probate matters are at the office of the circuit court. Deeds, mortgages, and leases are the responsibility of the recorder of deeds. In mailing requests to any Illinois county office, use the title of the appropriate county officer and “County Courthouse,” with the address listed in the county pages linked below.
For some counties there are two years for “Date Formed.” The first is the year the county was created. The second is the year it was fully organized if it differs from the creation year. Under the heading “Parent County/ies,” the name/s listed may be the county or counties from which the respective county was formed, or it may be the name by which the county was formerly known. “Unorganized” denotes that some formerly non-county area was included. A county name in parentheses is the county to which the unorganized land may have been attached at that time. Counties listed with an asterisk (*) are those in which you may also find records for the respective county since it may have been “attached” to that county for some period of time.
The date listed for each category of record is the earliest record known to exist in that county. It does not indicate that there are numerous records for that year and certainly does not indicate that all such events that year were actually registered.
Deed records usually coincide with the beginning of a county, so earlier dates in the land sales column usually indicate transcribed records from a parent county, or land patent records that contain information on original land sales from the public domain. The earliest court records for Illinois counties created after 1818 are invariably records of the circuit court. Chancery, civil, and criminal cases are usually filed together at first.” For counties created during the territorial period, the following gives the type of their earliest court: St. Clair: Court of the District of Cahokia; Randolph: French Provincial Council; Madison, Gallatin, and Johnson: court of common pleas; Edwards, White, Jackson, Pope, Monroe, Crawford, and Bond: county court; Franklin, Union and Washington: justices' court. Jackson, Cook and Franklin counties lost early court records in fires. Choose from the counties below to view the county information.
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