This past week or so we have been researching online documentation for a family that began its’ U.S. roots in the Chicago area.  They migrated from Prussia / Austria / Bohemia in the late 1800s.  Cook County has a great online index (http://www.cookcountygenealogy.com/SignIn.aspx) which gave a beginning for our research.  Another two great resources are the Illinois State Archives (http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html) which has indexes for marriages (1763 to 1900), and a death index (pre-1919 to 1950); and the familysearch.org site which has many certificates online.  Combining these resources, a few obituaries we found online and the U.S. Federal Census; we were able to find one of our research family lines, the Kasprzak family, migrating from Prussia in 1885.  We ended the week research with developing a preliminary draft of the Kasprzak / Graves Family lines.

Tom Mendonca My bride, Denise, and I are from the Gresham, Oregon. Parents of two, parents-in-law of two and grandparents of four. We enjoy and value family, history, and heritage.