Mortuary Schedules for Illinois 1850-1880

Ancestors from Illinois or those who died there, there are Mortuary Schedules for the years 1850 to 1880. Coming from the online database of FamilySearch.org, available are name indexes and images of mortality schedules from Illinois,1850-1880. Mortality Schedules were created in conjunction with the U.S. Federal Census and listed people who died in the year preceding the census. Mortality schedules were first included in the 1850 census. These include lists of people who died Jun 1849 – May 1850, Jun 1859 – May 1860, Jun 1869-May 1870, and Jun 1879 – May 1880. There are over 4,300 scanned images from the mortuary schedules of Illinois.

So if you had ancestors who died in Illinois or lived in a bordering state in the mid-1800s, you may need to review these morality schedules to find when, where and from what an ancestor died. This can be very helpful locating about infants who died at only a few weeks or months old and little or no records on them.

A person’s names, age, birth and death date was given and where. Of special interest will also be listed the person’s occupation (if they had one) plus what they died of. There appears to be many cases of inflammation of the brain or bowels, or typhoid fever. Even back then you see death caused by a case of measles especially in children.

You may come across a disease or illness you never heard of. This is where you will need further research. Many illnesses of today had different names in the 1800s.

Also try different surname spellings. Go over the handwritten schedule because more details are there than on the index.

You can save to your computer the index and scanned images from FamilySearch.org.

Photos: Margaret Franklin in 1870-an infant and Philip Everhart in January 1860.

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Vintage Illinois Newspapers