Skip Navigation   Description of the Chicago City Council
Proceedings Files Inventory  This database is an inventory of
the Chicago City Council's proceedings files from the city's
first incorporation as a town in 1833 through the year of the
Great Fire of 1871. These files were maintained by the city
clerk and served as the council's working papers, the primary
documents written by or presented to the council. Its formal
minutes were written from them and abstracts from the
proceedings were published in politically-designated newspapers.
These files thus form the most complete surviving record of the
considerations and actions of Chicago's government for the
period; no other source offers comparable details of the day-to-
day public business of a town which grew into a city and then a
metropolis of over 300,000 inhabitants in a little more than
thirty-eight years.  There are 35,650 of these files, comprising
157 cubic feet of material. A file can consist of a single scrap
of paper or several hundred pages. Ea