Your out of luck on a birth certificate. They just didn't exist before 1877 in Illinois. Your best hope is to find baptismal information from church records, if you know they belonged to a particular church. As far as newspapers are concerned, they did not publish anything about births back then as far as I have seen -- just deaths and marriages and very little information on those. If you're interested in looking at newspapers, they are available on microfilm for either interlibrary loan or purchase (most of them) from the Illinois Historical Library in Springfield, Illinois (or you can go to Springfield and look through them.) I don't know if the Savanna newspaper is available for that time period. I know the Mt. Carroll newspaper (Carroll County Weekly Mirror) is available, because I just ordered two rolls covering 1870 to about 1875 -- just the ones you're interested in. I haven't received them yet, though. They only do microfilm copying once a month. I recently went through a roll of the Carroll Co. Weekly Mirror for the years 1860-1869 (with lots of gaps in the middle) and it took me several months to read through them, mainly because the headlines are in about the same type as the body of the articles. There are, however, some things that the newspapers list that might give you some info. on your ancestors -- listings of overdue property taxes, listings of registered voters, and complete listings of school attendance, etc. -----Original Message----- From: xcellnt@hotmail.com [mailto:xcellnt@hotmail.com] Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 10:54 PM To: ILCARROL-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Mt. Carroll Newspaper??? Elizabeth A. Higgins/James Martin Higgins This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Higgins Roach Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Yg.2ADE/898.1.1 Message Board Post: I just learned my great aunt, Elizabeth A Higgins was born in Savanna, IL on 12/18/1872. A Carroll Co website states the birth certificates are not available that far back. I believe at least one other brother, James Martin Higgins, was also born in Savanna in 1869. Maybe another brother too. Any idea if their births would have been recorded in the newspapers or where I could obtain copies of their birth certificates? Their parents were Bridget Roach Higgins and Patrick C Higgins. I believe Patrick was a carpenter. They later moved to Madison, Wi. Thanks for any help. ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237