Genealogy and Local History Fair

The Genealogy and Local History Fair returns to the Indiana State Library on Saturday, October 24, from 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM. It's a popular annual event that brings together genealogy presentations and exhibitors under one roof, and this year it's built around a single theme: America 250: Researching Our Early American Ancestors. That theme ties the day's talks and booths together, so whether you're there for the presentations or just to browse the exhibitors, you'll find the same thread running through it all.

On the presentation side, Michael Strauss is taking the floor twice. His first talk, The Road to Independence: Defiance, Crises and Coming War, looks at the buildup to the Revolutionary War, and his second, In the Cause of Liberty: Voices from the Revolutionary War, focuses on the people who lived through it. Anni Parsons rounds out the lineup with The Hunt for Patriots in Your Ancestry, which gets into the practical side of tracking down those early American connections in your own family tree.

If you have time to look around, the library has more going on than just the fair. You can check out the Summer Lecture Series, Indiana Voices, the narrated-audiobook program from the Talking Book and Braille Library, and Hoosier State Chronicles, the state's digital archive of historic newspapers. The library itself is a limestone building dedicated in 1934, just a few steps from the Indiana Statehouse, and it houses both the state library and the Indiana Historical Bureau. It's been serving Hoosiers since 1825, so it's a good place to spend a Saturday if you're into local history.

The fair runs from 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM at the Indiana State Library, 315 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204, and it's free to attend.