Illinois marriages--search them in about a minute!

If you are looking for an ancestor who may have married in Illinois, there is an excellent resource which is very accessible. The Illinois State Achives has an easily searchable marriage index. If you want to see all the marriages possible for a last name, in case the first name is mispelled or somehow different from what you expect, you can just search by that last name. There are good directions for using the website, and when you are ready, you can just click on "Search the Statewide Marriage index now."  The website is the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900, and is located at http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/marriage.html. You can search statewide or by county. If I am looking for the bride of Chicago photographer C.D. Mosher, for example, I just plug in the last name Mosher for the groom, and the results show me that there are two men named Charles D Mosher who married in Illinois. By looking at the names of the brides, the counties they married in, and checking census records, I can take the next step in identifying his wife and their ancestors.