A Review of the Declaration of Intention Database Now Online for Cook County, Illinois

In September of 2008, The Circuit Court of Cook County announced that the Declarations of Intent (1906-1929) indexed database was going online. At that time there were approximately 140,000 records indexed and posted. I see that there are now about 150,000 records at the site! The database is updated weekly with the new data.

I did a search on the surname, Gfeller, as my Gfeller family immigrated to Cook County, settling in Orland before 1870. I knew I would I would not find record of Rudolph Gfeller, my great-grandfather, but thought I might come up with others by the name. And sure enough, I found two Gfellers who came in later, both filing their “first papers,” and one of them was from Bern, where my family came from. Now I wonder if there is a connection!

The following screen shot shows information of Elise Gfeller, from Bern, Switzerland:

The following is from the site:

The Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County Archives is home to more than 500,000 naturalization petitions covering the years 1871 to 1929. More than 400,000 of these records are Declarations of Intention, 1906-1929 which were usually the first papers to be filed by those who wished to become U.S. citizens…

This database of Declarations of Intention was created thanks to a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a division of the National Archives. Since the beginning of the project in November 2006, more than 150,000 Circuit Court records have been entered into the database, and we continue to enter more on an on-going basis.

Now search for your Cook County Ancestors’ information!

Thanks to my friend, Linda Petrasek, for pointing out this terrific site to me.