Research Services Available From CCGS Members:
The following CCGS members have given permission for their names to be added to our list of local researchers. These members will, pending their availability, accept requests for local research. The Society sets no fee guidelines--each individual researcher determines the cost in consultation with the patron requesting assistance. Some researchers may be willing to go to the Champaign County Historical Archives; the County Courthouse; the local Family History Center or the University of Illinois Library.
University of Illinois Library Assistance: Cherie Weible can be contacted at
cweible@illinois.edu She is not available for paid research. However, she may be consulted regarding the effective use of the University of Illinois Library for genealogy research.
CCGS Research Chairman: Contact Karla Gerdes at
kjeanne1@juno.com with questions or requests for assistance.
CCGS Research Site: The research site for the CCGS is the Champaign County Historical Archives, located on the second floor of the Urbana Free Library; Urbana, Illinois. The Archives is open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday; open Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Their collection emphasizes the history and genealogy of Champaign County from its beginning in 1833 to the present. The Archives also has a large selection of books from other Illinois counties, some states east of the Mississippi River, and some European countries.
The Archives is designated as a Family History Affiliate Library, so when patrons order microfilms online from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City they can select the Archives as their place of research. The microfilm readers and reader-printers can copy to paper for $.10 per page, or to a flash drive for free.
The Local History Online database, known as The Champaign County Historical and Genealogical Index, is free to view on The Urbana Free Library website
here. It contains more than 4,000,000 names that are extracted from Champaign County, Illinois, records located in the Archives. Those records are original documents either on paper, or on microfilm, and can be copied or scanned to paper or copied to a flash drive.
Not all records available in the Archives are indexed in Local History Online. The Archives has microfilm of all Champaign County Death Registers and Certificates from 1878-1945. The Archives has about two-thirds of the Illinois Death Certificates (1916-1945) microfilms, out of the total number of 1227 microfilm. A few of the death records are not indexed on Local History Online or in the CCGS Birth and Death Records database (1878-1916), so be sure to check both before contacting the Champaign County Clerk's Office.
The Champaign County marriage licenses from 1833-1916, and the marriage applications through 1975, are both indexed on Local History Online.
Additionally, the Archives has a photocopy of the volumes of Champaign County Birth Records from 1900-1918 and so far, only a few of those names are on the Local History Online index database. These birth record photocopies are available in the Archives, and the CCGS index to these records is on this website.
The Champaign County deed records are available in the Archives on microfilm--both the Grantee and Grantor Indexes that index land deeds from 1833-1928, and the microfilm copies of Deed Volumes A-Z and Deed Volumes 1-76. Those records are not indexed in Local History Online, so the deeds are another record that could be researched. For these, or any other record, please see Research Services Available From CCGS Members above.
