Madison County Recorder:
157 N Main St Suite 211 Edwardsville, IL 62025 (618)296-4775As your Madison County Recorder, our office insures the timely and proper recording of all documents tied to land in Madison County, including but not limited to, deeds, plats, liens, easements, and foreclosure notices. Through a system of Grantee/Grantor indexes, patrons can search the title history to all land in Madison County. Our records date from 1812 to the present. We also record and provide copies of DD 214 (discharge) records for our veterans, and record and certify out of county marriage licenses and birth certificates.
There is a great deal of historical information within our records vault. We have original maps and plats of the towns and cities in our county, as well as survey, road, and railroad records and maps dating to the beginning of our county. Some of our historical miscellaneous record books contain articles of incorporation which illustrate the developing industries in the area in the early the 1900’s. We also have an index of churches and cemeteries.
Our office is an excellent site for historical and genealogical research in our county. We invite you to peruse our original records, in beautiful handwritten script, and inundate your senses with the smell, look, and feel of our historical documents. We also have computer access to our more recent records, which have been digitized.
Our records vault is open to the public during regular office hours, Monday – Friday from 8:30 – 4:30. Our vault will remain open 4:30 to 7:00 on September 19th, 2013 for a public research session, and dependent upon attendance, we may adopt regularly scheduled “after-hours” sessions.
Our office also has equipment to scan documents up to 36” width. If your library has large documents, such as maps or posters, of which you would like to have a digital image, please contact Rena’ Becker with our office. Dependent upon our workload and resources, we can schedule a time to digitize your images.
We look forward to cooperation and sharing of resources with the libraries in Madison County. Should you have any questions regarding the foregoing, or should you wish to take a tour of our office and vault, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Amy M. Meyer
Madison County Historical Museum and Archives:
715 N Main St Edwardsville, IL 62025 (618)452-6238Illinois State Archives:
The Illinois State Archives serves by law as the depository of public records of Illinois state and local governmental agencies which possess permanent administrative, legal, or historical research values. Its collections do not include manuscript, newspaper, or other nonofficial sources.
Illinois State Library:
Gwendolyn Brooks Building300 S. Second St.
Springfield, IL 62701−1796
217-785-5600
800-665-5576 (Illinois Residents)
888-261-2709 (TTY/Hearing Impaired)
Hours: Mon.−Fri. 8 a.m.−4:30 p.m.
The Illinois State Library is the principal information resource for state government. The library has a collection of more than 5 million items and subscribes to numerous electronic databases and services that allow patrons access to thousands of additional resources. The State Library serves as regional federal documents depository, maintains an authoritative collection of historic and contemporary Illinois documents, and houses more than 185,000 maps.
Illinois Digital Archives
The Illinois Digital Archives (IDA) was created in 2000, as a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library as well as other libraries and cultural institutions in the State of Illinois.
What can you find in the Illinois Digital Archives?
- Photographs, slides, glass negatives
- Oral histories
- Manuscripts and letters
- Illinois government documents
- Federal government documents
- Postcards
- Posters
- Videos
- Newspapers
- Maps
- and more!
History of the Great Lakes States
Free Online Books, Articles & Maps for the History of the Great Lakes Region and the States created there: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan & Wisconsin.
History of the Great Lakes States was created to make it easy for people to browse through an online library of books and other resources that were chosen from the vast amount of free material now available on the internet.
Our theme is the history of the region once known as the ‘Northwest Territory’. In the early 1800s this region became the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and we have a lot of material on the site about that pioneering and state-building era, up to about 1860. We also have numerous items about previous eras; from archaeological studies of the ancient ‘mound-builders’ through more than a century as part of the French North American empire; then decades of British domination in the late 18th century followed by U.S. territorial governments.
Nearly all materials on the site were published prior to 1924. The majority of the books and articles from the late 19th and early 20th century were written by historians or other professional writers. However, we also have a very large number of accounts that were written by the explorers, missionaries and pioneers themselves; people who entered the region in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.
None of the materials found here were put on the internet by the History of the Great Lakes website. Instead, we provide links to materials that were professionally scanned and digitized by non-profit organizations. They host the materials on their own websites and provide document viewers. All materials are in the public domain, as their copyrights have expired. With a couple of exceptions, all can be viewed online at the links we provide. More than half the books can be downloaded to your e-reader if you have the appropriate software. Your use of all this material is entirely free of charge. You do not need to register or provide any personal information.
Madison Historical: The Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County
Madison Historical: The Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois is a new project coordinated by the Department of Historical Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Through an online encyclopedia and digital archive, Madison Historical will:
- Inform the community about the history and culture of Madison County, Illinois
- Provide an authoritative and accessible resource for students, genealogists, scholars, and other persons interested in Madison County and local history
- Create a framework for ongoing documentation of Madison County history by providing a user-friendly digital collection of historically significant documents and oral histories
Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections
This collection contains 110 newspaper titles, 132,668 issues comprising 1,440,499 pages and 6,887,660 articles.
Since 2005, the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library at the University of Illinois has been developing unique digital newspaper content. The works collected here include digital facsimilies of newspapers and trade journals in a variety of fields. Users may search, browse, tag, and correct OCR text to improve searchability and access.
