View of St. Adalbert Church, Chicago, IL
Photo taken July 2000. Photo and text by James J. Czuchra.

This Polish church has needed expensive repairs that the Archdiocese of Chicago was not willing to make. In early 2017, the building was sold to the Chicago Academy of Music.

These are some notes describing some of the record volumes.

Births

Baptisms volume 8: This volume consists of about 31 baptisms per page spread over two facing sheets. Because there are many baptisms per page, the writing tends to be smaller and harder to read. The handwriting is generally harder to read in its own right and not just because it's smaller. The layout of the page puts the fathers and mothers names in the middle at the binding. This meant some names were caught in the binding and unreadable. Some torn pages had been taped but the adhesive has since discolored the paper making some names unreadable.

Baptisms volume 17: This is the last of the filmed baptismal volumes for St. Adalbert Church in Chicago. The volume includes 7 records per page spread over two facing sheets. While the volume consists of about 300 pages, filming ended at about page 200 before the year 1916 began. The writing is generally pretty good.

Deaths

Even though St. Adalbert Church in Chicago was founded in 1873, its imaged death records do not begin until the very end of 1904. The handwriting is generally satisfactory but there is little information included in the death record beyond the name of the deceased and the age. The cemetery of burial is usually given. Place of birth is usually just Chicago or Poland. Stillborn births were only indexed if there was some indication of a surname in the record. While a given name is provided for some of these, it is more likely the name of the father. Page 56 of volume 1 of deaths is missing. Does it exist and was not filmed or was the number skipped in numbering the pages? Page numbers 100 and 101 are worn off so you would need to count from page 99 if you are browsing manually. Given names were sometimes entered in abbreviated form but were expanded in the index. So, Fr was expanded to Frank. This is not always 100% accurate.