Historical Court Records
The McHenry County Circuit Clerk holds records dating back to the 1850’s. Some of these records include immigration and naturalization records prior to 1929, when the County Courts stopped granting naturalizations and the task was given entirely to the Federal Courts.
The original immigration and naturalization documents, and some other older court records from the 1800’s, are house at the Illinois Regional Archives Depository at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (IRAD). The Local Government Records collection is part of the Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) system administered by the Illinois State Archives. The University libraries at NIU serves as one of seven regional depositories throughout Illinois involved in preserving local public records and making them available to researchers. These records are older documents used by historians, genealogists, and local government officials.
Types of records available vary from county to county and may include: birth, marriage, death, naturalization, probate and deed records and some can be found online through the Illinois State Archives website. IRAD will also accept search requests by mail at Government Publications/IRAD, Founders Memorial Library Room 245B, Northern IL University, DeKalb, IL 60115.
Abraham Lincoln in McHenry County
In 2006, as part of an ongoing historical preservation initiative to catalog all cases handled by Abraham Lincoln as an attorney in Illinois, it was discovered that Abraham Lincoln had handled the appeal on a case originating in McHenry County.
It was an 1846 case where Eli Henderson, one of the earliest settlers of Algonquin, was sued by two of his business partners. The trial took place at the McHenry County Courthouse on the Woodstock Square, and Henderson ultimately lost the case at the county level.
Henderson decided to appeal the decision directly to the Illinois Supreme Court. To handle the high-profile appearance, he hired a rising attorney from Springfield, Abraham Lincoln, who had just been elected to the U. S. Congress a few months prior.
Despite Lincoln’s growing legal reputation and efforts, he was ultimately unsuccessful in convincing the IL Supreme Court to overturn McHenry County’s original ruling.
Lincoln practiced law in Illinois for twenty-three years. He taught himself the law and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1837. By the mid-1850’s, Lincoln had become one of the most highly respected and successful trial lawyers in the state. His presidency began on March 4, 1861, and ended upon his death on April 15, 1865, 42 days into his second term.
Attorney Clarence Darrow in McHenry County
Clarence Darrow, a historically celebrated attorney, argued and won what some researchers think was likely his first case argued before a jury at the McHenry County Courthouse in January of 1880. At this time the McHenry County Courthouse was located on the Woodstock Square, in the county’s third courthouse building.
Clarence Darrow attended law school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but left after one year in 1878. He later went on to work for an Ohio lawyer and passed the Ohio Bar exam in 1879.
Darrow came to Harvard, Illinois (in McHenry County) in 1879, when he was 22 years old, to live with his friend and former classmate, Louis Hudson Stafford who lived at 704 Hart Street. Darrow later rented a small room over the hardware store at 28 N. Ayer Street and opened his own law office.
Darrow argued and won what many think was his first case tried by a jury at the McHenry County Courthouse in January of 1880. The case was People vs. Jas. Hall. Mr. Hall was accused of attempted burglary, breaking into the Marshall, Saunders & Marshall’s store in Harvard in the fall of 1879.
People v. Hall – Case number 9136 – January 20, 1880
Clarence Darrow later received national recognition for his 1925 defense of John Scopes during the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Tennessee. This trial involved the right to teach evolution in the public schools. Darrow’s character was portrayed by actor Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film “Inherit the Wind.”
Hanging on Courthouse Lawn - 1886
In the spring of 1884, the McHenry County Courthouse was in the national spotlight with the incarceration and murder trial of James Dacey. In May of that year, Dacey shot and killed Chicago Alderman Michael Gaynor in a South Halstead Street saloon in Chicago’s “Bloody Ninth Ward.”
Immediately surrendering to police, Dacey was escorted away from a growing angry mob and fearing a riot, police kept Dacey’s location secret. Believing Dacey could not receive a fair trial in Chicago, his lawyers requested a change of venue and Dacey was transferred to Woodstock and placed under the watch of McHenry County Sheriff Asad Udell.
The trial drew national attention. Dacey pleaded insanity but was found guilty and sentenced to hang in November 1884. Dacey’s lawyers appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court and days before the hanging the Court awarded him a stay of execution while his case was reviewed. The folllowing May 1885 the court upheld the McHenry County Court’s decision and Dacey was again scheduled to hang.
Dacey’s brother and lawyer petitioned Illinois Governor Richard Ogelsby to intervene claiming Dacey was insane and should not be put to death. A day before the hanging, the McHenry County Court received word that Governor Ogelsby granted a stay until the question of Dacey’s sanity could be determined.
June 1886 a second Dacey trial began in Woodstock, not to determine guilt or innocence, but to determine the question of Dacey’s mental state. After hearing testimony from several doctors, a second McHenry County jury determined that James Dacey was indeed sane.
On July 12, 1886, James Dacey was hung in the yard of the Courthouse on the Woodstock Square. The hanging was witnessed by 150 people. The gallows were borrowed from Cook County and they were constructed in the small courtyard between the Courthouse and Donnelly’s General Store (Donnelly’s building was later torn down and replaced with the Sheriff’s building a year later in 1887).
A tall fence was built around the courtyard to block the hanging from public view, but as was customary in those days, tickets were printed and distributed to those who wished to view the event. Although most were content to sit in the Square Park, about 120 purchased tickets, including the murdered Michael Gaynor’s brothers and mother.
After it was over, Dacey was lowered directly into a coffin and the body was turned over to Patrick Dacey, a brother, who took it back to Chicago on the 4:52 train. Prior to burial, Dacey’s brain was examined by doctors at Rush Medical College, looking for physical signs that might indicate insanity, but they were unable to find anything out of the ordinary. People v. James Dacey – case #9704
Serial Killer Mark Smith - 1970
Convicted serial killer Mark Alan Smith (born June 27, 1949) killed at least four women in Illinois and Arkansas and was sentenced to 500 years in prison for three of the deaths. Smith later confessed to killing eight women while stationed as a soldier in West Germany, for which he was never prosecuted, and authorities believe he could be involved in other murders, both in the United States and overseas.
Two of Mark Smith’s murder convictions were in McHenry County. Smith was born in Chicago, but moved with his family to McHenry County at the age of 7.
Smith’s McHenry County victims were a 27-year-old mother of two, who was kidnapped from a McHenry laundromat on January 27, 1970, and later a 17-year-old McHenry High School student who was abducted on May 27, 1970.
Smith later confessed to the two killings, as well as additional murders in Arkansas and Cook County. He was sentenced to 500 years’ imprisonment for the Illinois murders in 1970. He avoided being sentenced to death because there was a moratorium on the death penalty at the time.
Smith’s defense attorney, Harold McKenney, and author Jon K. Hahn, later wrote a book, “Legally Sane,” which was published in 1972 and detailed the life of Mark Smith and the killings. Mark Smith remains in the Illinois Department of Corrections and has petitioned for parole as recently as 2024, which was denied. His next scheduled parole hearing is scheduled for 2029.
Charles Albanese Sentenced to Death - 1982
Charles Michael Albanese (June 13, 1937 – September 20, 1995) lived in Spring Grove and was convicted of poisoning three family members with arsenic in McHenry from 1980 to 1981, for both financial gain and to take control of the family-owned trophy making business, Allied Die Casting Corporation, in McHenry.
The McHenry County trial was moved to Bloomington due to extensive local publicity about the case. A jury in McLean County convicted Albanese of two counts of murder, for the murder of his father and his wife’s grandmother, and one count of attempted murder for poisoning his brother. Following the trial, McHenry County Judge Henry L. Cowlin was required under the law to impose the death sentence, in keeping with the decision made by the same 12 jurors who found Albanese guilty.
In October 1982, Albanese was also sentenced to death by Lake County Judge Lawrence Inglis for the arsenic poisoning death of his mother-in-law.
The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed both convictions in 1984 and again in 1988. In May 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Albanese’s last appeal, letting stand previous rulings that he was properly convicted and that the death sentences were valid. During the final hours Governor Jim Edgar refused a clemency request.
Albanese was executed by lethal injection on September 20, 1995, at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, becoming the fourth inmate in Illinois to be put to death in 1995. Albanese was the first and only defendant to die on a sentence from a McHenry County judge since the state started keeping records in 1928.
