The National Genealogical Society brings its Family History Conference to Fort Wayne from May 27 to 30 this year. The theme is “America at 250,” and the location is no accident. Fort Wayne is home to the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library, the second-largest genealogy library in the country after the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. If you’re a genealogist and you’ve been meaning to make a pilgrimage, this is your year. Here’s what to know if you’re registered—and what...

The World Turned Topsy-Turvy During the late Middle Ages, particularly in France, though the tradition spread across Europe, communities observed a festival that church authorities spent decades trying to suppress. It was called the Feast of Fools. It originally began as a week of festivities around the New Year. But, before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, the new year began on March 25. On 1 April 1698, several people were punked into going to the Tower of London to "see...

What happens to genealogical research after we're gone?