Presenter: Curt Witcher
Topic: "Making the Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne Your Research Assistant,"
Curt Witcher is the Director of Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, managing the widely acclaimed Genealogy Center as well as the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection of Abraham Lincoln related research materials. He is in his forty-first year of service at the Allen County Public Library.
Curt is a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society, and the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society. He has penned many hundreds of articles on topics of interest to family historians, librarians and archivists, and has presented lectures to historical and genealogical groups across the country. Curt also serves on the Indiana State Historical Records Advisory Board and the board of the Friends of the Indiana State Archives.
Curt was distinguished in 1995 as a fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association (FUGA) and received the Federation of Genealogical Societies' Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award, in 1997. Curt was recognized in 2006 by being named the first fellow of the Indiana Genealogical Society. He was honored in May of 2007 with the National Genealogical Society’s P. William Filby Award for outstanding, life-time contributions to genealogical librarianship. Indiana’s lieutenant governor recognized Curt’s work in the summer of 2016 with a Hoosier Hospitality Award, and the Dallas Genealogical Society awarded him the Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck Distinguished Service Award later that year for outstanding contributions to the genealogical community on a national level. In August of 2018, Curt received the Loretto Dennis Szucs Award from the Federation of Genealogical Societies in recognition of his many years of dedicated service to the genealogical community. Most recently, he is an Indiana Historical Society 2019 Eli Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award winner for his extraordinary contributions to the field of history and the Indiana Historical Society.
