Our Blog

by Delia

Music has played a big part in my life, from the hymns drilled into my head in the children's choir, to rock and roll that grew as I did, to learning about the earlier music - classical, big band, jazz and blues. I have recently been exposed to blue grass music, an American style with Celtic roots.

On Siriusxm Radio's Bluegrass Junction, I was listening to the Track by Track show recently, and the album being discussed was "God Didn't Choose Sides, Volume 1 - Civil War True Stories About Real People"written and performed by well-known Country and Blue Grass artists. This project focuses on the common men and women, North and South, who were affected by the war. During the show, one of the participants described going into museums to study photographs and other items, then researching the stories behind the artifacts. I found the whole idea fascinating since Civil War politics and the statistics of battles and troop movements don't interest me nearly as much as the personal stories of the people involved. The project's website has a section for each song which includes lyrics, historical background of the story that inspired the lyrics, with specific names, photographs and other historical information.

My husband purchased this first of three volumes of the project and the songs are beautiful. What does all this have to do with family history? In this era of when family historians are participating in the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it's good to know that non-genealogists also feel the pull of history and the urge to tell the stories of those who were involved.

We want to remind everyone that The Genealogy Center, like the rest of the Allen County Public Library's Main Branch, will be closed Sunday March 31, 2013. We are open our regular hours, 9A to 6P, on Saturday, March 30th, and on Monday, April 1st, 9A to 9P.

Whether they celebrate the holiday or not, many families have traditionally gathered that day, sharing stories of childhoods and ancestors.This year, if your family gathers, listen and record (audio, video or with pen and paper) the stories your relatives wish to impart.

Register soon to attend "Researching Australian Family History, with Additional Tips for Finding Your American Ancestor in Australia," presented by Liz Pidgeon, Local and Family History Librarian at Yarra Plenty Regional Library, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She will provide an introduction to research in Australia, and an overview of sources, including archives, genealogy and family history societies, convict research, military resources, and libraries, including the National Library's Trove website, and she will also be available for research questions after the lecture.  This one-hour class starts at 2:00 PM and will be held in Meeting Room A.

For more information, see the brochure. To register for this free event, send an email or call 260-421-1225.

The Genealogy Center's version of March Madness is next week, Monday March 4th through Saturday March 9th. This year, we are concentrating on the stories of our and our ancestors' lives. Classes include:

Monday March 4, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Gathering & Writing the Stories of Your Life -- Beginning Steps
Curt Witcher

Tuesday March 5, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Did It Really Happen That Way? Documenting Oral History
Delia Bourne

Wednesday March 6, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Insuring Our Story: Recording & Transcribing Oral History
Melissa Shimkus

Thursday March 7, 2013, Heirlooms & Artifacts – Meeting Room A
11A – 12N: Tracking Heirlooms & Telling Their Stories
Dawne Slater-Putt
2 P – 3 P: Beyond the Family Bible: Making the Most of Heirlooms and Artifacts in Genealogical Research
John Beatty

Friday March 8, 2013, 10A-11A, Meeting Room A
Writing Personal History
Dawne Slater-Putt

Saturday March 9, 2013, 10A-11A, Meeting Room A
Creating a Family History Storybook
Cynthia Theusch

For more information, see the March Madness brochure. To register for any or all of these free events, send an email or call 260-421-1225.

by Delia

As you enter The Genealogy Center, you are greeted by a staff member and stop to ask a few questions before starting your research. Or maybe, when you enter, there are several people already asking questions at the desk, so, anxious to start, you bypass the crowd and begin on your own. Either way, later on, you have questions and you look over, and there are a couple of staff members tapping away at a keyboard or examining a book or some papers. No one is asking them any questions, but they look so busy that you don't want to "bother" them.

Well, first, and most importantly, we are never "too busy" to answer your questions and guide you in your research, so you must just overcome that hesitance and ask away. But, yes, we are busy, doing many things that, we hope, will add to our collections and enable you to search more efficiently.

So, just what are we doing?

One staff member peruses book catalogs and periodicals, seeking announcements of new books that are being published, books that we'd like to add to our collection. Another staff member is keeping track of the film that has been borrowed from the Family History Library. Someone else may be organizing material that has been donated or loaned to us for our Photocopy Exchange Program. That person is creating an addition for our Free Databases, and this one is editing something for publication, while I am making additions or corrections to our Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana Area Obituary Index, and yet another colleague is devising a schedule that will allow our small staff to provide reference assistance at all times.

Then there are things that all of us do on a regular basis, including planning and preparing programs and classes, preparing for Consultations, writing guides and articles for Genealogy Gems, and updating this blog, as well as our Facebook and Twitter accounts. And this year, we are also planning for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference, on August 21-24, 2013.

And then there are the smaller tasks that pop up on a regular basis, so, yes, we are busy improving The Genealogy Center for you, our visitor. But remember, we are never too busy for you to ask us a question!

More than 4,000 cemetery records for Jay County, Indiana, have been added recently to The Genealogy Center's Free Databases, as well as 4,000 entries into the Evangelical Messenger Obituary Index. Thanks to the many volunteers and donors who make this a rich and growing website for genealogical researchers!

Recently, additions have been made to the Marsha Smiley African American Collection! This wonderful collection, gathered by Fort Wayne African-American historian and researcher, Marsha Smiley, includes area African-American fraternal organizational material and memorial cards, and is hosted on The Genealogy Center's Free Databases website. Our appreciation to Ms. Smiley as she continues to add to this material, creating a growing collection for those searching the African-American community in Fort Wayne!

by Delia

Back in the mid-1990s, when The Genealogy Center was still the Genealogy Department, staff members were trying to add material to our collection. We realized that there were some areas in the United States for which we had very little -- or nothing at all -- as research sources. So my colleagues and I began writing letters (before email!) to various archives and societies, seeking information about sources they had, for donation, if possible.

We received some really nifty stuff in return. Some we had to purchase, but many were gifts from different locales, schools, churches, historical societies and businesses.

A few days ago, there was a package addressed to me, and inside were two volumes for us as donations, a very nice letter telling me that the archives to which I'd sent a request more than 15 years ago was now able to send material, and a copy of my original letter! It was great to know that the requests I had sent then were still bearing fruit!

And, of course, this is also a reminder that we are still looking for those local items that make our collection such a great resource: church directories and histories; school yearbooks of any year or location; business, town and neighborhood histories; and, naturally, family histories. If you're not sure we'd want it (though undoubtedly we will), just email us.

And thank you, to all who have donated in the past. We couldn't do it without you.

The Genealogy Tracers of Cleveland, Ohio, have added more to their Obituaries and Memorial Programs database, hosted by The Genealogy Center. These documents add a wealth of information for the subjects of each item, as well as family and community members. The Genealogy Tracers continue to gather and add more items on a regular basis, expanding this database so that it is beneficial to those in Ohio and other states. The material is available on our Free Databases page!

 

by Delia

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 created Washington's Birthday on the third Monday of each February. Washington was born February 11, 1731, but due to Great Britain's change from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, which not only moved the calendar forward eleven days, but also made January 1st the start of the new year, instead of March 25th, he switched his birthday to February 22, 1732, to reflect this change. His birthday became a holiday for Federal workers in the District of Columbia in 1879, then expanded to all Federal workers in 1885. Lincoln's birthday (February 12) has never been an official holiday, but businesses began using the term Presidents' Day, and several states made their official holidays "Presidents' Day."

Whatever you call it, The Genealogy Center will be open its regular hours, 9A to 9P, and staff members will be here to answer questions and guide you in your research. Presidents' Day has traditionally been a great day for researchers, so come on in!

Good news! The shift is over! To provide room for expansion in our book stacks, a project was undertaken to shift material, creating room for growth. A great deal of planning to streamline the process was done before a single book was moved, and the result is amazing! In just two and a half months, our staff moved almost 75% of our book collection!

Books for Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin (977.4 thought 977.8) joined the Western state books in the compact shelving, and the rest of general United States material and Eastern states spread into the space created, leaving top shelves and some bottom shelves free for future expansion.

To create space in the compact shelves for these Midwestern states books, European material was moved from the south set of compact shelves to the western part of the north set of compact shelves.

Click to view the new Genealogy Center layout.

by Delia

Recently, I had a customer ask what The Genealogy Center has on the computers. She said she always comes for the extensive collection of books, some of which are one of a kind, and the microfilm collections, but she was noticing more people coming in and spending the whole day on the computer, so she wondered what we had that she couldn't get at home.

We have an excellent collection of subscription databases, including Ancestry, Fold 3, American Ancestors, Origins Network, Slavery and Anti-Slavery Archive, and Archives Unbound. I showed her their location on our On-Site Databases page and explained each of them. She was happy to know what we had and said she'd try them on her next visit.

But her question made me think. We all love having information instantly, just sitting at the glowing screen and pulling data from various wide-flung archives and databases. But we need to be careful about neglecting the book and microfilm collection as we research. Yes, Ancestry does have all of the Federal Census online and it's searchable. But sometimes it's just better to browse the pages using microfilm. Yes, Fold 3 does have many military records, but not everything. And, yes, some of our books have been digitized and are available at Internet Archive or Family History Archive. But those constitute only a small part of the collection.

So the next time you visit, be sure to spend some of your time curling up with a good book or two or a hundred. We receive new volumes of local and regional records and histories, military and family histories every month. Take a few minutes to search the catalog before you arrive. There is a great deal of information awaiting you between the covers!

By Dawne

When the doors of the library open at 9 a.m. (or noon on Sunday) and you enter The Genealogy Center, you will see one or two librarians seated at the Ask desk, working on projects and waiting to welcome patrons. Guest passes are there for you to collect and the librarians are ready to answer your questions about where to find materials, the layout of the department, and where to begin your research. Computers, copiers and printers are humming and ready to go. Have you ever thought about what goes on before the library opens in the morning to get the area ready for you to do your research?

An Environmental Services housekeeper is the first to begin the day’s preparations in The Genealogy Center, dusting and cleaning counters and around computers and starting to turn on machines. This starts before 8 a.m.

The day-shift librarians “clock in” at 8. They continue the task of turning on lights in the catalog and copier alcoves and powering up the machinery, including copiers, printers, catalog stations, the registration computer, public service computers, print station computer, microtext scanners and Ask desk computers and printers. Currently, the public service computers are left on overnight to receive updates, but this has not always been the closing routine. If everything in the department needed to be powered on, there would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 buttons to press!

One of the first tasks of the librarians is to print the day’s guest passes. These are sheets of paper that have temporary library card numbers for our non-ACPL-cardholding patrons to use to log into the computers. If we are running low on copy/print cards, one of the librarians might prepare a stack of cards. Occasionally someone takes some old guest passes or other paper and cuts it into quarters to make scrap paper for customers who come into the department on a whim without bringing supplies. We also restock the boxes of golf pencils that we keep for the same reason, and the handouts that we have at the Ask desk.

A full-time shelver comes on duty at 8:30 a.m. and begins cleaning the glass on the copiers and the digital sender, and adds paper to all of the copiers and printers. This is also the time for routine maintenance on microfilm and fiche readers and printers. Service is no longer available on some of the old readers, and the Allen County Public Library's Maintenance staff have been trained to repair them.

Once or twice a week, The Center staff, those who are familiar faces and the behind-the-scenes crew who process and catalog the collection, gathers for a 30- to 40-minute meeting during the 8 a.m. hour to touch base on public activities and events, library issues and other topics.

If there is time left, the librarians start cleaning the spam messages out of the Ask a Librarian email queue and answering the questions that have come into that mailbox overnight. Then the door locks click, the elevator bells ring and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs can be heard – it’s time to welcome the day’s patrons to The Genealogy Center!

This session takes the armchair research of the past - letters, queries, Interlibrary loan and phone calls - and gives it a modern twist. There's so much that can be found through the Internet to advance your research, even if you do not subscribe to a single commercial (for-pay) database!

Meeting Room A, 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM.

To register for this free class, send an email or call 260-421-1225.

For more information, see our WinterTech brochure.

By John

The recent effort of Ancestry to correct some of its birthplace entries in the census database is to be applauded. For many years we have known that census takers wrote "IA" for Indiana in the birth fields on the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Abstractors transcribed it incorrectly as "Iowa." A recent announcement herald that these earlier errors have been corrected.

There is still more to be done to make federal census images more complete. When Ancestry and other companies digitized the federal census records, they used the microfilm versions of those records, instead of going back to the original volumes. (The originals are only available for early census to 1870; the later schedules have been destroyed). Unfortunately, when the original films were created, some errors occurred and a few scattered pages here and there were never filmed. They still exist in the original volumes in the National Archives and Records Administration, but researchers using the census databases will not find the names on those pages, since they have never been digitized.

Here's a story that illustrates the challenge. More than a decade ago, the late George Fitzgerald, a local Fort Wayne genealogist, undertook some research on George McCulloch, a Fort Wayne banker and later Secretary of the Treasury in the Lincoln administration. He searched the 1850 census, but couldn't find him (a younger man with that name was listed, not the 40-year-old banker from Maine). Where was Hugh? George went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., examined the original 1850 register for Allen County, and discovered that page 159 of Wayne Township, Allen County, had never been filed due to camera operator error. There he found Hugh McCulloch along with six other households, all of which were later transcribed and published in the "Allen County Lines," vol. 26, no 4 (June 2002).

In my research over the years I have discovered that other census pages were inadvertently missed. In 1820, a number of pages were left out of the microfilm of the Virginia census, now transcribed online, as well as in the "Virginia Genealogist," vol. 18, no. 2 (April-June 1974). Unfortunately, the accompanying household data was not abstracted.

I feel certain that there are other missing pages here and there in the microfilm editions that resulted from camera operator error many years ago. If a company such as Ancestry were to digitize these lost pages, they could truly lay claim to having the most complete census records extant. However, locating and correcting these omissions could be a herculean task.

In any case, it is worth noting that if you absolutely cannot find someone who you feel should be on the federal census, it may be that you are encountering a missing page. While not a widespread problem, such errors do exist.

As we spend time searching for our ancestors, we often forget that we and others around us have important stories to share. This year, March Madness, Genealogy Style will examine the various ways these stories can be saved and documented for future generations. Classes include:

Monday March 4, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Gathering & Writing the Stories of Your Life -- Beginning Steps
Curt Witcher

Tuesday March 5, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Did It Really Happen That Way? Documenting Oral History
Delia Bourne

Wednesday March 6, 2013, 2P-3P, Meeting Room A
Insuring Our Story: Recording & Transcribing Oral History
Melissa Shimkus

Thursday March 7, 2013, Heirlooms & Artifacts – Meeting Room A
11A – 12N: Tracking Heirlooms & Telling Their Stories
Dawne Slater-Putt
2 P – 3 P: Beyond the Family Bible: Making the Most of Heirlooms and Artifacts in Genealogical Research
John Beatty

Friday March 8, 2013, 10A-11A, Meeting Room A
Writing Personal History
Dawne Slater-Putt

Saturday March 9, 2013, 10A-11A, Meeting Room A
Creating a Family History Storybook
Cynthia Theusch

For more information, see brochure. To register for any or all of these free events, send an email or call 260-421-1225.

Starting Monday, January 21, 2013, the Dunkin' Donuts on the first floor of the Allen County Public Library's main branch will close an hour earlier Mondays through Thursdays, at 8 PM instead of 9 PM. As usual, of course, no food or beverages are allowed in The Genealogy Center.

Liz Pidgeon, Local and Family History Librarian at Yarra Plenty Regional Library, in Melbourne, Victoria, will offer "Researching Australian Family History, with Additional Tips for Finding Your American Ancestor in Australia." She will provide an introduction to research in Australia, and an overview of sources, including archives, genealogy and family history societies, convict research, military resources, and libraries, including the National Library's Trove website. She will also be available for research questions after the lecture.

Liz began as Librarian Cataloguer at YPRL in 1991 and was involved in the early implementation of digitization programs. In 2005 she was appointed as Local and Family History Librarian co-ordinating local and family history services for the region as part of the Community Engagement team. Responsibilities include overseeing collections, developing partnerships with local history groups and councils, and promoting the value of local and family history to the community through network meetings and programs in the library. She has a long time personal interest in both local and family history, and is actively involved in the preservation of photographs and stories. She has also been a Creative Memories Consultant for over 10 years.

This one-hour class starts at 2:00 PM and will be held in Meeting Room A.

To register for this free event, send an email or call 260-421-1225.

Take advantage of this rare, and free, opportunity to hear and meet with an expert from Down Under!

by Melissa & Delia

Recently, a researcher was bemoaning the fact that one of the recent natural disasters that have befallen this country destroyed the county facility where she had hoped to search for records on one of her families. Imagine her happiness when it was pointed out to her that the original records may have been destroyed, but various organizations and authors had already published books and articles which indexed and transcribed the marriage, probate and deed records that she needed and that we had those books here in The Genealogy Center!

While examining original records is always preferable, in many cases where floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other events have made that impossible, the past and current activities of local genealogical and historical societies, lineage societies like the D.A.R., the W.P.A., and individual authors have recorded this precious information.

Of course, preservation activities within the community are always advisable. Libraries or local societies can make contact with the court clerk and investigate scanning or microfilming the records for storage elsewhere. But for records lost in the past 20 to 30 years, don't forget our genealogical predecessors who have already paved the preservation way.