October is Family History Month! If you’ve been wanting to dig into some genealogy research to learn about your great-great-great grandparents, now is the time. Documenting and preserving this history for generations to come can be a really meaningful experience, and no one else is going to do it for you. To get started, try searching your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ names on one of these websites.

• Ancestry Online: Search census records, birth and death records, and more, dating back to 1790. The password for Ancestry is the first 8 digits of your library card number.
• Family Search: Search family members’ name to find your family tree.
• Indiana Digital Archives: Find people, photographs, land records, and more from Indiana.
• Chronicling America: The Library of Congress’s digital collection of newspapers from around the country dating from 1789-1963.
• Indiana Memory: Indiana-based newspapers, photographs, historic documents, and more.
• Elkhart County Genealogical Society: Your Elkhart County resource for all local history documents. Visit the Elkhart County Historical Museum in Bristol to check out the collection.

Or, check out a family history/ genealogy book from the library’s collection!

Looking for a local obituary? The Middlebury Public Library has issues of the The Middlebury Independent newspaper dating back to the 1800s, stored on microfilm. Visit or call the library if you’re interested in browsing this collection!