Welcome to Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana!
Allen County INGenWeb is hosted by the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana. We continually add new resources to help research your family history online. ACGSI works in close cooperation with the Allen County Public Library and their vast Genealogy Center resources. ACGSI recently add a searchable index to One-Room School Houses. The local Mary Penrose Wayne Chapter of the DAR - Daughters of the American Revolution has a growing web site with genealogical resources. If you find our information useful to your research please consider contributing information or helping with tax deductible donations to ACGSI or the Allen County Public Library.
The Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana Beginner's Workshop "Getting Started in Family History & Genealogy Research" Saturday April 3, 2010 9 am - 12 pm at the Allen County Public Library 900 Library Plaza, Fort Wayne, Indiana $10.00 pre registration. Download pdf flyer to print in Adobe Reader or click image on left.
The 2010 United States Census with 10 short questions will start in March 2010; questions and information is available on the 2010 United States Census web site. The census is required by law, see Title 13, so if you don't fill out the form and mail it back, someone from the census will be knocking on your door. The American Road Trip Blog follows their tours across the county. An accurate population count is important for many reasons. It is a popular tool for use by genealogists to find ancestors and family members with clues to their occupations and lifestyle. It would also be useful to make a copy for future genealogists to use before 2082, when the 72 year "window" makes it available for public research purposes. The census is used for official and unofficial uses to allocate money at all levels of government and for private business development. The most important use is to redistribute the members of the House of Representatives in our federal and state legislative branches through Congressional Apportionment which ultimately determines what proposals become law of the land that affects everyone living in this country. Ohio and other northern states will likely lose representatives to southern states because of increases in southern populations. Indiana lost a Representative in the House in 2000, having now lost 4 total representatives the past 100 years for this reason. No attempt is made to distinguish citizens, whether native born or naturalized, or legal residents from illegal residents of our population. The Better Business Bureau is warning: Be Cooperative, But Cautious! of likely scams from attempts at identity theft.
Allen County has a population of around 350,000, the county seat is Fort Wayne, established in 1794 as a fort named for Army General "Mad" Anthony Wayne a veteran of the Revolutionary War who died in 1796. There were several Forts of Fort Wayne. The most famous is Whistler's 1816 fort. Everyone has heard of Whistler's mother, Anna McNeill Whistler, from the famous 1871 painting Arrangement in Grey and Black. Few know John Abbott McNeill Whistler's grandfather Major John Whistler helped build the 1816 Fort Wayne on what was then the western frontier and where John's father George Whistler was born May 19, 1800 in Fort Wayne. There is a book about Whistler's Father. A little known actor named Marion Robert Morrison was originally given the stage name Anthony Wayne, but Fox Studios change it to John Wayne who became a leading man in 142 of his 153 movies a Hollywood record. Comic book and movie character Batman, alter ego Bruce Wayne, is depicted as a direct descent to General Anthony Wayne.
The state of Indiana was admitted by President James Madison as the 19th state of the union December 11, 1816. Allen County is located in northeast Indiana and is the largest of 92 counties. The Wabash & Erie Canal was completed in Fort Wayne to Huntington County July 3, 1835 and was replaced a couple of decades later by the railroads. The Allen County Links page contains a growing list of area attractions in addition to local genealogy related sites.
John Chapman aka. Johnny Appleseed is buried and celebrated each September at Johnny Appleseed Park on the north east side of Fort Wayne. Several members of the infamous bank robber John Dillinger, the FBI's Public Enemy #1, gang are buried in Fort Wayne cemeteries.
My name is Stan Follis, the Allen County Coordinator since April 2009 representing The Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana. We have a Query page where you can leave your queries. We also have lookup volunteers like Linda Churchward on the Lookup Volunteers page you can contact for help. If you would like to add your name to the list of lookup volunteers, have any contributions or suggestions for this web site, please e-mail me.
Suggestions for Researching on Allen County, INGenWeb
- Use the Search Box at the top of each page - it searches our hundreds of INGenWeb and ACGSI pages
- Search and Post a Query on our Query Page which may take a while until someone reads your page and knows your answer - keep your email address up to date so they can contact you
- Search and Post a question on the Rootsweb Message Board which like a Query will take some time before someone reads and answers your question
- Request assistance from one of our Lookup Volunteers with a specific question not answered on our site
- If you wonder why more information online isn't free, then read this article by Dick Eastman in his newsletter Why It Isn't Free!
To find out more about the Indiana GenWeb Project or if you would like to host a county, please contact Debby Beheler, the Indiana State Coordinator, or Sharon Craig or Katy Hestand the Assistant State Coordinators.
You can visit our neighboring Indiana counties: Adams County, DeKalb County, Huntington County, Noble County, Wells County and Whitley County. Our Ohio county neighbors are: Defiance County, Paulding County and Van Wert County. You can also visit any Indiana GenWeb county or click the maps to either side.
You can share our Allen INGenWeb page on your Facebook "Wall" by clicking Share ACGSI on Facebook