About Allen INGenWeb Project

INGenWeb is a volunteer group offering freely available genealogy resources online.

If you would like to add corrections, contribute your family history, documents, biographies, bible records, family stories, maps, and photos Contact Allen INGenWeb so we can add your information to our pages.

Wayback Machine

A screen shot of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine web page shows how Allen INGenWeb looked in 1999. Allen INGenWeb started in the spring of 1996 when a group of Indiana genealogists working with Kentucky genealogists organizing the Kentucky Seekers web site organized a database project. They indexed and cross-linked while volunteers coordinated content into web pages. By June 1996 the USGenWeb Project was established and by October the plan was to organize by state and county.

By August 29, 1996 Indiana had 47 counties online with 14 more volunteered and under construction. Frederick Bonjour was the first webmaster and then Allen County Coordinator Pat Bogel was being assisted by Fred Finkbiner by July 1997.

Franklin County INGenWeb has a page The Indiana GenWeb discussing Betty Sellers the first INGenWeb State Coordinator, assisted by Fred Finkbiner, describing the early years of INGenWeb.

Internet Archives previously had two different Allen INGenWeb archives - April 17, 1999 to May 16, 2005 which no longer works and  April 27, 1999 to the present.

GenTech 98

GenTech 98 was held January 23 and 24, 1998 at the Grand Wayne Center in Fort Wayne sponsored by the Allen County Public Library Foundation with Patricia Bogel as one of the INGenWeb coordinators helping with the event. The Keynote Banquet Speaker was Tony Burroughs author, lecturer, genealogy teacher, former board member FGS and AAHS, past president of AAGHS of Chicago, president of Black Roots, NIGR and IGHR graduate and computer consultant. His presentation was Will this Gizmo Help Me Trace My Tree? A 126 page book on Gentech 98 is on the shelves at the Genealogy Center and Dick Eastman's Online Newsletter archive reviewed GenTech 98. Tony Burroughs was interviewed by Hackonomics TV Host Eric Hackley about what makes the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Department such a great facility for genealogical research for his You Tube video at The first International Black Genealogy Summit held October 29-31, 2009 at the Allen County Public Library. On April 16, 2019 J. Mark Lowe - Professional Genealogist and Speaker on Facebook posted a photo of his cassette from GenTech 98 and included a link to Dick Eastman's Column Archive from that date: http://www.eogn.com/ archives/news9804.htm

County Co-ordinators

In early 2000, Linda Churchward took over webmaster duties from Pat Bogel. Linda put all the information on cemeteries, churches, and funeral homes on the site.

In 2009, INGenWeb changed the web site host from Rootsweb, after it was acquired by Ancestry.com, to their own domain at www.ingenweb.org due to concern the free genealogy of GenWeb would be compromised.

In April 2009, Stan Follis took over as webmaster.

Pat Bogel passed away November 20. August 2009.

When the new host server said INGenWeb had too many pages, Allen INGenWeb moved to ACGSI.org. Many changes were made including adding a search box that searches both Allen INGenWeb and the main ACGSI site totaling more than 10,000 pages on both sites. Many new pages were added.

Social Media

In October 2009, social media was added when ACGSI joined Facebook. Within a month we had 20 Fans viewing Announcements and Events. Member obituaries are on the Notes page. In May 2010 ACGSI passed 100 Fans. In September 2010 photo albums of program meetings and Who Am I? photos needing identification were added. We currently have around 1,300 Facebook likes.

September 2011 started a What's Going On @ ACGSI WordPress blog and in February 2012 started a Twitter page with now over 600 Followers.

Contributors

This history was possible due to contributions of several INGenWeb volunteer webmasters over the years such as former CC Linda Churchward; KySeeker: Betty Sellers in 1996; current INGenWeb County Coordinators: Judi Burns CC of Greene County, Mike Sweeney CC of Wabash County, Debby Beheler CC of IN State and Miami County, Tim Singleton CC of Randolph County, Gene Andert current and original CC of Kosciusko County and from 1996 Judy Murphy CC of Perry, Spencer and Crawford Counties.

You can also read the INGenWeb History and USGenWeb History.