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The Illinois State Archives include a state wide family history database including vital records database, Illinois State Marriage Index from 1763-1900, the Illinois State Death Index, before 1916, and Illinois State Death Index from 1916-1950.
In both the US and the UK there are volunteer based initiatives to digitize and index Birth, marriage and death records for family history purposes. In the US you can refine your family history search by county, state and names. In the UK you can access the index of births, marriages, and deaths from England and Wales from 1837 to 1983. The free BMD database includes over 68 million family history records.
The world wide web is a great place to start searching for family history. Just type in the names you are looking for into any of the standard search engine like MSN, AOL, Google, Yahoo or AskJeeves. Be aware though that this method of searching is hit and miss. Arcalife provides a family history web search that narrows the focus on the Internet to specific sites and categories where family history information is located. Start by entering the names and years you are looking for, and go from there
When hiring a family history expert it’s a good idea to get references from people who know the persons work or pick someone who has well know family history qualifications like the IHGS or membership of the history society. If you are paying for your family history its worth setting out to the person you are hiring what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to search back through your family line, look laterally for living family members, flesh out the history of a specific family member or explore a particular side of your family history first.
