Heritage Tourism Means Big Bucks
FORT WAYNE, (Indiana’s NewsCenter) – At least 100,000 heritage tourists are contributing upwards of $10 million each year to Fort Wayne’s economy simply by looking up their family’s history.
The Genealogy Center located at the Allen County Public Library in downtown Fort Wayne is ranked in the top three throughout the United States and is the biggest of its kind housed in a public library. The 100,000 visitors who seek their ancestry at the Genealogy Center each year hail from around the world, according to its manager, Curt Witcher.
“By the end of each year, we have a visitor from every one of the states, the entire country of Canada and all its provinces and a couple visitors from the British Isles. We average between 92,000 and 103,000 visitors per year.”
Witcher says the business of familial research is booming as hit television shows and technology have changed the way a person can find his or her family. He says that before the introduction of the Internet, only descendents of the rich, famous or infamous could trace ancestry. Now, the playing field of family tree building is a level one.
“The ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ television show, along with the technology boom that started in the 90s, has just made genealogy so much easier and so much more accessible to more people.”
Those opportunities are expected to continue to blossom as genealogical archives expand on April 2. At 9 a.m. that day, the 1940 Census, the first post-Great Depression census, will be released for free and in its entirety online.
Chris Martin, a Fort Wayne native, is among the many that can be found at the Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne. Martin, in preparation for his first trip abroad to Germany, is trying to locate the stomping grounds of his ancestors. He says the research can be trying but is worth the hard work because discovery carries an element of mystery.
“The neatest thing about that is just seeing who you are, who these people were, what life they had.”
Martin discovered that his great-grandfather, John P. Martin, and his father before him, Methias Martin, were both cigar makers. Martin smiles as he tells of his great-grandparents. Martin, who works construction, also smiles as he shares a common link on his mother’s side.
“Some of my other family was stonemasons and construction laborers. And I work in the construction field myself. So it’s kind of funny how that goes.”
When discussing the work performed at the center, Witcher says the old adage that one must understand where he or she comes from before he or she can understand where they are going might sound trite, but he believes it. Martin does as well.
“Oh yeah, I really do think that applies. It makes you feel who you are, why were you born this way.”
Witcher expects more like Martin to take advantage of the more than one million documents available in the 42,000 square foot facility on the second floor of the library. Next August, the Genealogy Center will play host to the Federation of Genealogical Societies.
