Donna Cox Baker hunts ancestors at Birmingham Public Library’s Linn-Henley Research Library, listed in Family Tree Magazine’s top-ten public genealogy collections. (Robin McDonald) It’s addictive in the best possible way. It was not a love of history that led me to genealogy, as some might suppose. Genealogy made a historian of me, and that’s a common tale.
I had been trained at Auburn for the field of hospital administration, which led me to relocate to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There, far from my Birmingham home and missing my family, a local advertisement for family history resources at the Fort Wayne Public Library caught my attention. They had Alabama records, and I was hooked. It was a puzzle of immense proportions; it was detective work; it put my existence into context; and it was an ever-growing gift to my family.
I had been trained at Auburn for the field of hospital administration, which led me to relocate to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There, far from my Birmingham home and missing my family, a local advertisement for family history resources at the Fort Wayne Public Library caught my attention. They had Alabama records, and I was hooked. It was a puzzle of immense proportions; it was detective work; it put my existence into context; and it was an ever-growing gift to my family.