Join us for a full day of genealogy presentations and exhibitors at the 2026 Genealogy and Local History Fair!  Our theme is America 250: Researching Our Early American Ancestors.

To register for the in-person event, please scroll to the bottom of this page.
To register for the virtual event, please click here.

Details

Registration for the in-person event is not required, but is preferred.  If you are an Indiana librarian who would like to receive 3 LEUs for attending, we ask that you please register for recordkeeping purposes.

Parking validation will be available for attendees who park in the Senate Avenue parking garage directly across from the library and bring their ticket in for validation.

For questions, or to register your organization as an exhibitor, please email the Genealogy Division at genmail@library.in.gov.

Sessions

Michael Strauss will present: The Road to Independence: Defiance, Crises, and Coming War -- In the decade before the opening shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the forces that would make revolution necessary were already at work. From the forests of the French and Indian War through the escalating imperial crises of the 1760s–1770s, the events and tensions that carried the colonies to the breaking point unfold across a generation of conflict and defiance. The records along that road place families squarely within the prewar struggles that made independence not merely possible, but unavoidable.

As well as, In the Cause of Liberty: Voices from the Revolutionary War -- The Revolutionary War was fought in part over tensions between England and her colonies that escalated over time into violence, with the opening shots fired in Massachusetts in April 1775. The men and women who lived that story left an extraordinary documentary record behind. Compiled military service records, pension files, state and federal bounty land warrants, local militia rolls, and Continental Navy and Marine Corps records document their service in remarkable detail. The lecture extends beyond the war itself, examining the national emergencies that followed — Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, revealing a young republic still struggling to define the liberty it had fought to win 

Anni Parsons will present: The Hunt for Patriots in Your Ancestry -- How do you trace your family tree back to the Revolutionary War in America to establish if you have Patriots or Loyalists in your lineage? Genealogy resources will be discussed and will be based on records in America during the colonial years.