Fort Wayne from Reservoir Park

Welcome to Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana!

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.

ACGSI - Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana works in close cooperation with the ACPL - Allen County Public Library, which maintains the second largest genealogy collection in the United States. Several indexing and digitizing projects are under way at the library, as well as other projects around the country, for future online access. Several nationwide volunteer projects are available such as the FamilySearch Indexing Project of census indexes and marriage records for counties across the United States. Marriage records from 1811 to 1959 are currently about half complete for Allen County, Indiana and information will appear here when available. We can always use volunteers for ACGSI and ACPL projects. ACGSI membership and direct financial support to ACGSI are always welcome.

My name is Stan Follis, the Allen County Coordinator since April 2009 representing The Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana. We hope to continually add new resources to help you research your family history. In addition to this Allen County INGenWeb site, the ACGSI maintains another web site in cooperation with the Allen County Public Library and their vast Genealogy Center resources. The local Mary Penrose Wayne Chapter of the DAR - Daughters of the American Revolution has a growing web site with genealogical resources, so I have links to the main sections of both sites. Check back often to see new links and additions. Remember to always cite your sources, including the date, URL address and page title, so please reference our site when you find family information here. 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.

While I live in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana I do not have time to do look ups for your family research. I design and maintain the web site. We do have lookup volunteers like Linda Churchward on the lookups 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.

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, Sharon Craig, Katy Hestand or Jeff Scism - Assistant State Coordinators.

You can also visit our neighboring Indiana counties: Adams County, DeKalb County, Huntington County, Noble County, Wells County and Whitley County. Our Ohio county neighbors are: Paulding County and Van Wert County.

Some web trivia: the Fort Wayne image at the top is from Google media and they link this page to the image I borrowed from their page!