Chicago residents will now be able to trace their genealogy with the simple click of a button. The Cook County Clerk's Office unveiled Monday its new Web site, "Cook County Genealogy Online," where Chicago residents can log on and look for their grandparent's birth certificates and death records.

The online database will include more than six million historical Cook County vital records. The Web site, which was officially unveiled Monday at the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, has been available in beta form since July. Since then 13,000 visitors have registered as guests, and the site has had more than 1.1 million page views from computers around the world.

“Our users are now as varied as the countries that have provided immigrants to Cook County,” said Courtney Greve, spokeswoman at the Cook County Clerk's Office.

People living everywhere from Malaysia to Chile have logged onto the new Web site, according to Greve. “What this Web site has allowed us to do is open up our database of records to a much wider audience.”

Not only has the Web site expanded the number of people able to view Chicago vital records, it has also made it much easier and faster for those who live inside the Cook County boundaries.

Those interested in their genealogies previously had to wait in long lines for researchers who in turn would look through the stacks and stacks of Cook County vital records.

John Apel, a retired Chicago police officer who does geneology as a hobby said the Web site is well worth the astronomical labor put into scanning and indexing all of the documents. “ It’s going to save people months or years of work,” Apel said.

Apel initially became interested in genealogy because he was raised in foster care and was curious about his family history. “I wanted to find out who I am and where I am from; and I think a lot of people want to do that,’ Apel said. He found out that he had six brothers and sisters who had been adopted, all of whom he located.

Even if one was not raised in foster care, vital records can be useful for finding out families’ health history.

“If you find out that your grandpa and your great-grandfather all died of a stroke then maybe you need to go to the hospital and get checked out,” Apel said.

According to Apel, one of the best aspects of the Web site is that it will connect Chicagoans to their heritages.

“America has so many nationalities and that’s what makes us strong,” he said.