Introducing the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Summer is a perfect time to pack up the car and take a genealogy road trip. Are you ready? How about a ride to northern Indiana through beautiful farmland (and just a few construction zones) to the second largest genealogy collection in the U.S.—the Allen County Public Library? Located in downtown Fort Wayne, the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library is second in size only to the FamilySearch (Family History) Library in Salt Lake City. At 367,000 square feet, it occupies a bright, spacious location on the second floor of a library that was entirely rebuilt in 2007. Here's why you might want to consider a trip there.

"Now You Know Your A, B, C's," Or Do You?

One of the first songs we learn as children is the “Alphabet Song,” and even though we don’t really understand what “ellamenopee” means, most of us somehow get the sequence of twenty-six English letters down pat by the time we are ready to read. We know, of course, that our language is always changing. Think of all the new words added to our vocabulary just in the past decade. But when you are working with documents generated by previous generations or those created in countries from which your ancestors arrived in America, you may not realize how much alphabets change, and how those changes can affect your family history research.