Lectures – Curt Witcher

Learn about the various types of genealogy and local history periodicals, and how PERSI can help one find articles to further one’s research.

Curt Witcher is the Director of Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library, managing the widely acclaimed Genealogy Center as well as the Rolland Center for Lincoln Research and the institution’s Fine Books Collection. He 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.

Curt 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 and beyond. He currently serves on the Indiana State Historical Records Advisory
Board, the board of the Friends of the Indiana State Archives, the Indiana Historical Society’s
publications committee, and the executive committee of the Friends of the Lincoln Collection of
Indiana’s Board of Directors. Curt also serves on the Northeast Indiana Jewish Genealogy
Society board of directors as well as an advisor for the African American Genealogical Society
of Fort Wayne.

Curt is distinguished as a fellow of both the Indiana Genealogical Society and the Utah
Genealogical Association. Over the decades he led collaborative national efforts to preserve
and make more accessible historical data. For those efforts he has received the Federation of
Genealogical Societies’ Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award and the National
Genealogical Society’s P. William Filby Award for outstanding, life-time contributions to
genealogical librarianship. Curt’s passion for finding families’ stories and his belief in the power
of those stories to change lives has been recognized by numerous organizations, most recently
receiving the Indiana Historical Society’s 2019 Eli Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award for
extraordinary contributions to the field of history. Curt has completed four decades of service at
the Allen County Public Library.