Community Corner
Search for Ancestors on Updated Will County Heritage Website
Plainfield Public Library's website hosts the free database.
The original 2009 Will County: Preserving History’s Heritage website now has several new collections to search for your Plainfield and Will County ancestors. The fully searchable database covers a wide swath of Plainfield and Will County history from 1836 to today:
- Will County Recorder of Deeds transactions from 1836 to 1885
- Plainfield Township Cemetery ledgers 1836 to 2000
- Plainfield area newspaper obituaries 1893 to today
- Will County Map and Atlas books for 1873 and 1893
- The earliest Shorewood Sentinel newspapers for August 1961 to May 1963
- Early Plainfield photos from the Miles V. Hartong Glass Plate Negative Collection at the Plainfield Historical Society
These records were digitized and indexed by volunteers as part of a Library Services and Technical Act grant awarded to the Plainfield Library in 2009 as well as a digitization grant awarded by the Illinois State Library in 2018. The grant partners are the Plainfield Public Library, Plainfield Historical Society, Shorewood-Troy Public Library and the Will County Recorder of Deeds. Each partner provided materials to be digitized and made available on the local website, as well as on the Illinois Digital Archives website.
