Déjà vu Chicago

 

It's been a long time since I last took a serious look at resources in Cook County, Illinois. Sure, my father-in-law and his entire family lived there for generations, but researching his roots has since led me on a tenuous path to Ireland. Chicago and its genealogical resources have been a distant memory for me.

Thanks to a fellow researcher following another Lee family, who has been sharing resources with me, I've since had that déjà vu experience. Things shared in our email correspondence are starting to jog my memory. 

One helpful item sent was a directory of Catholic churches in the Chicago area, complete with information on each parish's history. The book, originally written by Jack Bochar in 1990 for the Czech and Slovak American Genealogy Society of Illinois and updated with a second edition in 1998, is thankfully available online at the website of the Archdiocese of Chicago. This is definitely a link I will keep handy as I puzzle over these family branches of the Flanagan line.

I also learned the updated way to access burial information for Catholic relatives in the Chicago area: look once again to the Archdiocese, where their website allows a timed access to burial information through the tab labeled "Locate a Loved One."

While these tips helpfully shared by a genealogy friend do take me down a memory lane of research efforts long since past, that real déjà vu feeling struck in earnest, thanks to an unexpected but serendipitous email from Family Tree Magazine. Who could have predicted that, just this week, they would include such a timely article as "Chicago: A Windy City Genealogy Guide"?

Reading through that list of Chicago resources certainly brought back memories of searches long since forgotten. I'm certainly appreciative of the reminder. It's been a long time since I last wandered through the  archival holdings of my father-in-law's hometown.