Welcome to the . . . . 
Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763–1900

An Ongoing Project of the Illinois State Archives & 
the Illinois State Genealogical Society

• Search the Statewide Marriage Index now.
• About the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index.
• Counties and date spans included in the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index.
• How to obtain copies of original marriage records.
• Tips on searching the Illinois Statewide Marriage database.
• Abbreviations in License Number Field.

About the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index
Since 1985 the Illinois State Genealogical Society (ISGS) has cooperated with the Illinois State Archives to create an index to Illinois marriages occurring prior to 1901. Today more than one million marriages, or two million names, are included in the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index. Data entry has been done by Archives staff and volunteers working on mainframe terminals at the Illinois State Archives and by other volunteers who have entered hundreds of thousands of marriages at home on their personal computers. Currently the Marriage Index resides on the Secretary of State web server and Department of Information Technology has developed an online program to allow volunteers to use their web browsers to send marriage data directly to the server for inclusion in the index.
The sources for this index include original county clerks’ marriage records, such as marriage registers and licenses, as well as publications of county genealogical societies and private individuals. For each marriage, the index includes the names of the groom and bride, the date of the marriage or issuance of the license, the name of the county in which the marriage was performed, and a citation to the original record—volume and page number for registers or file number for licenses. Volume and page or license numbers are omitted in the index when published sources failed to provide this information. Although the primary aim of the project is to enter marriages occurring prior to 1901, some volunteers have chosen to enter a county's marriages through 1920. Click here for a listing of counties and date spans currently included in the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index.

• The date shown in the data returned as a result of a search may be either the date of the marriage or the date a marriage license was issued depending upon the source from which the information was extracted. The date is shown in the following format: MM/DD/YYYY (e.g., 09/06/1836).
   
• Remember to scroll to the right of the results screen to view all of the data for each marriage.
   
• To print the list of marriages from the results screen, set your printer's page orientation to landscape.
   
• Illinois marriages were not required to be performed in the county of the bride's or groom's residence. If your search does not find a marriage in the county you expected it to occur, try selecting STATEWIDE in the location option box.

The following abbreviations were used in the license field when marriages were entered from a source other than a marriage register or license:
 

AFD ONLY	Affidavit Only
APLONLY	Application Only
CA CH RC	Catholic Church Record (St. John the Baptist Catholic Church)
CHUR REC	Church Record
DEED BK	Deed Book
FINK	Sam Fink's Index to Chicago Marriages (1833–1871)
FR NEWSP	Freeport Newspaper
IRQ JRNL	Iroquois Journal
ISGS ART	Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly
LICRETUR	License Return
NO MARR	No Marriage
NOT MAR	Not Married
PER COLL	Perrin Collection (Illinois State Archives)