I've had experience with this and it's really not that difficult or expensive. You do need the legal description but you can usually get that once you have an address. I'm not sure what years you are looking at but some ways to get the address is through the census, directories and court records (as you mentioned). Once you have the correct address (don't forget about the street name and address changes in the early 1900's), you can try to get the legal description through the Cook County Gov site. If that doesn't work, then you can go to the Cook County Building 3rd floor and usually get it there. I don't purchase the papers/photocopies but write the legal description down once they find it. Take that to the basement of the bldg and if you don't know how to use the books (some referencing of one book to the other), you can ask someone for help. They are usually pretty friendly. If you go on a Friday and if they are not busy, they are usually in a good mood due to the upcoming weekend. At least that has been my experience. The copies are inexpensive, I believe $.50 a page and you will most likely only have a few pages from the tract book but all the transactions should be listed on that page. If you want the documents that the tract page are referencing, then that is a whole different extended process and more expensive. I've only done that once so I'm not that familiar with the process. But I do recall having to go from room to room in the basement to have people look up different items/numbers and then looking them up on microfilm and going back upstairs to pay for everything. Hope this helps. Kim -----Original Message----- From: cook-co-il-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:cook-co-il-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of gainebyrne@comcast.net Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 10:34 AM To: Cook County list Subject: [COOK-CO-IL] Chicago land and property records Has anyone had experience at researching land and property records for Chicago? The way I understand it is thus: Start with a legal description of the property. A street address is not enough. Naturally, I will be going through the city directories. I t's possible I will not find an address there. Other possible sources for a street address are probate and divorce records. We know the family had a house in Chicago, but we don't know where. They were wealthy, but we don't even know a neighborhood. We do not know when they bought it or sold it. We don't know if they had it built or bought an existing house. I know that we would get the legal description from the county treasurer's office, the county clerk's office, or the city of Chicago Bureau of Maps and Plats. Once we have the legal description, we take that to the Tract Dept at the Recorder of Deeds. The tract books contain information on the property. Of course, this will involve reading, studying, copying and money. The whole process is covered in "Chicago & Cook County A Guide to Research" by Loretto Dennis Szucs. There are also some films through LDS. I don't know how helpful they will be. https://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titledetails&titleno=250395&disp=Burned+record+series+books%2C+1871-193%20%20&columns=*,0,0 Anyone have any advice on how to handle this? I plan on using the book as a guide, but does anyone have any personal experience with this? Good? Bad? How long did it take? That kind of thing. I imagine this will be a lengthy process, but if we achieve success, that is what's important. Debbie ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to COOK-CO-IL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message