In this blog post, CHM research center associate Annika Kohrt highlights resources in the Chicago History Museum’s Abakanowicz Research Center that may be helpful in conducting genealogical research.
Are you looking to unravel the stories of your Chicago ancestors? The Chicago History Museum’s Abakanowicz Research Center (ARC) might be a helpful stop on your journey. Our librarians are happy to assist you in navigating the resources in our Family History Guide.
Group of immigrants at Union Station, Chicago, 1950. ST-17500902-E1, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM
Let’s start with your ancestor’s arrival in Chicago. Were they born here? Vital records are handled out of the Cook County Clerk’s Office, but you might find newspapers listing their birth in our newspaper databases.
Wedding announcements for (from left) Mrs. Harold H. Adams Jr. (Frances Amelia Cannon), Mrs. John O. Stoll (Margaret Crowe), Mrs. Robert Morrison (Florence Meling), and Mrs. John J. Schwab (Catherine Tunison) (lower center) in the Chicago Daily News, October 10, 1925.
If they were adopted, a record of them might exist in one of our orphanage records. If they moved to Chicago from another country, there are plenty of records of the immigrant communities of Chicago, and we can help you imagine their life with published, photographic, and archival material from the relevant enclaves. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and the one where your ancestors lived deeply shaped their lives.
Death notices in the Chicago Daily News, October 10, 1925
Our archive’s strength is really in contextualizing and providing narrative to the experiences of people living in Chicago throughout history. So, your next question might be the essential one: What was their life like in Chicago? If you’re lucky, something newsworthy might have happened in their life, and you’ll find results in our newspaper databases when you search for their name. If their name and address don’t appear in the newspaper, you can investigate where they lived with the city directories. We have a complete collection of city and telephone directories, dating from 1839 to the present.
Chicago City Directory, 1877–78, p. 819. Photograph by CHM staff
The city directories will also tell you a person’s occupation, and if you know what company they worked for, you might be able to find some company records and publications. If you have their address, you can use fire insurance maps to look at the neighborhood they lived in, as close as you can manage to the time that they lived there. You can look for photographs and neighborhood histories, and you might be able to find a school or church that they attended. We have a yearbook collection and high school and college periodicals. Some churches published anniversary publications and histories of their spaces, which you might also be able to find in the ARC.
Fire insurance map of Sedgwick Street, Hammond Avenue, and North Park Avenue near Wisconsin Street, Chicago, c. 1892. Published in Atlas of Chicago, Volume 2, Plate 158
If your ancestor was a performer, you might find a program featuring them in their church’s ephemera, or you might find something in our theater, dance, and music program collection.
The cast list for Julius Caesar at the Chicago Opera House, September 24, 1888. Photograph by CHM staff
This is the essence of research at any archive: there are dozens of questions to answer, and each new discovery may send you to a new source. Some people’s lives and communities are very well documented, and some are not. Parts of this pattern are because of systemic differences in historic preservation and collecting, but some of this is due to luck as well! For example, we don’t have every yearbook from the history of Chicago, but maybe your ancestor is in one of the ones that we do have, and there’s only one way to find out! We love assisting researchers with their research, so come visit and follow the thrill of the chase with us!
Additional Resources
- Explore our digitized images at CHM Images
- Read about the importance of discovering the full names of women in our blog post “Naming Women to Recover Histories“
- Search the collections of several Chicago institutions at Chicago Collections