The Cook County Recorder has an excellent site with search at http://www.ccrd.info/CCRD/il031/index.jsp The index appears to run from 1985 to the present and includes a wide variety of document types including deeds, mortgages, and wills. You can search by name, document number, or, as you suggest, by property description. It looks like a lot of the documents themselves are also online although you probably have to pay. Here we have a similar system and the charge is $1/page. In my experiences here in Allegheny County, PA, if you want to search further back, you must go to the recorder's office or have someone do it for you. It's almost a sure thing that they have both indices and copies of the original documents for deeds, mortgages, and wills going back to the moment when Cook County was created as a legal entity. Here that is 1788. Unfortunately, in most places the Recorder's office does not typically provide a search service since commercial entities are constantly doing searches of their records to validate property titles and to track deadbeats. Wills offices and prothonotaries often do provide such services but for deeds, you have to go there or pay someone - usually. Don [1]http://www.DonsList.net - Always free, always fast [2]http://New.DonsList.net - Recently added On 03/07/12, gainebyrne@comcast.net wrote: 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. [3]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 [4]COOK-CO-IL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message References 1. http://www.DonsList.net/ 2. http://New.DonsList.net/ 3. 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 4. mailto:COOK-CO-IL-request@rootsweb.com