Early Illinois Marriage Records Index

This was a printed index to the large computer data base of early Illinois (predominantly pre 1900) marriage records maintained by Hunting For Bears Genealogy Society. This and the other 15 indexes had limited application to the HFB data bases and are mostly obsolete. As data was collected from the rest of the 50 states, only electronic versions of the surname indexes were created.

The Hunting For Bears published marriage data collection as of about 1980, covered 16 states, was bundled with Family Tree Maker(c) and sold in the tens of thousands and was crucial in making FTM(c) the most popular genealogical software in the world.

The same collection was included in Ancestry's(c) initial data searches, playing a significant role in its rise to the world's premier genealogy data search engine.

That was the 1980 collection, the 2011 collection dwarfs it in comparison. The collection is now used to publish county marriage books, e-books and statewide marriage records CDs.