Pike County, Illinois - USGenWeb site
The definitive history of Pike County, Illinois is known as The Jess M. Thompson Pike County History : as printed in installments in the Pike County Republican, Pittsfield, Illinois, 1935-1939. It consists of 193 chapters in a 563-page book published in 1967 by the Pike County Historical Society which was produced from the series of weekly articles written by Mr. Thompson from 1935 to 1939 and published in the Pike County Republican, of which he was a contributing editor. Hard copies of the printed book are available in various libraries.
The book is available online as:
An "early" text transcription ca. 2001 and still available is: Jess M. Thompson Pike County IL History Chapters.
Each chapter is listed by number in a matrix. There is also a link to the everyname index which directs to a different website in the next item. As of August 2014, the site and index link are still working.
An everyname index to the book was separately prepared and posted at: Everyname Index to Pike County History by Jess M. Thompson
Another county history is the "1880" Pike County History by Chas. C. Chapman & Co. Full title: History of Pike county, Illinois; together with sketches of its cities, villages and townships, educational, religious, civil, military, and political history; portraits of prominent persons and biographies of representative citizens. History of Illinois, Embracing accounts of the pre-historic races, Aborigines, French, English and American conquests, and a general review of its civil, political, and military history. Digest of state laws.
It is presented in various online formats including PDF, EPUB and text. However, the text version is the apparent result of an OCR scan, so there are numerous character interpretation errors. It is, however, text-searchable, but be flexible in specifying search terms.
Over the decades, families routinely migrated among these counties, including those in Illinois. My own ancestors and relatives also lived at various times in Lincoln, Pike (MO), Calhoun, Jersey and Pike (IL). At one time there was even a ferry boat (Hamburg Ferry) that provided regular trips between the shores (not sure when it began or if still in service).
Links and brief information about surrounding counties is posted on the (TBA) Pike County, Illinois USGenWeb site. These sites vary as to quantity and quality of genealogical data. Include a couple especially useful links.
A few notes and key links. Information about "Pritchard" photographer of Louisiana, Missouri.
Note that the City of St. Louis separated from St. Louis County in 1876. Records are maintained separately.
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