Birth, marriage, and death are records are protected by the county clerk of each county. The previous Stephenson County clerk had no desire to open his records, and in fact he charged the maximum fees per copy as allowed by law. The new county clerk is much more cooperative. The last I heard (from a member of the Stephenson County Genealogical Society) was that the new clerk was going to allow copies of the microfilm for older birth, marriage, and death records to be made available in the local history room of the Freeport Public Library. I heard this back in April or May. The person who told me this is very reliable, and she is a very active member of the society. As I recall, she thought the records would be available in a matter of months. I am sure we are all hoping this is true. I haven't been to the library since this spring, but the next time I get into Freeport, I'll check to see if anything has happened regarding these records. The only reason records have not been available is because of the former county clerk. Right or wrong, his objective was to earn as much money for his office as possible. If the records are available at the local library, the county makes no money from them. If it is correct that these records will be available on microfilm at the Freeport Library, you will have to be patient. It takes time to produce copies of all that microfilm. Ken At 08:02 PM 10/10/99 -0500, you wrote: >Is there anybody in he Freeport Genealogical Society who can help us remedy >this situation or steer us to the correct person or department. > >Dave Halm >Haverhill, Iowa > >davehalm@netins.net > >Searching for RUST and LUBBERS > > >-----Original Message----- >From: RogerCubs@aol.com <RogerCubs@aol.com> >To: ILSTEPHE-L@rootsweb.com <ILSTEPHE-L@rootsweb.com> >Date: Sunday, October 10, 1999 7:45 PM >Subject: Re: [ILSTEPHE-L] Stephenson Co. Missing.. > > >>In a message dated 10/10/99 3:05:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time, >>SBrown5329@aol.com writes: >> >><< Roger, >> I don't know that the county is to blame. Most of the other counties >> either have individual volunteers or the Genealogical society transcribes >it >> as a society project. >> >> Sam Brown >> Benbrook, TX >> >> >>I wouldn't think the IRAD centers around the state would depend on >>volunteers. They are funded and operated by the Illinois Secretary of >State >>office. I doubt Ogle Co. had volunteers able/willing to transcribe them >but >>they sure have a lot of records at the DeKalb site for Northern Illinois >>counties. In looking at their brochure, it says the IRAD centers work with >>local officials to transfer records. >> >>Roger Cramer >>Peoria, AZ >> >> >>============================== >>Caught an error in the Social Security Death Index? >>Use RootsWeb's POST-EMS to post a note about it! >>http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ > > >============================== >Search the Social Security Death Index online for FREE! >http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ >The most powerful SSDI search engine on the Internet! > >