MOCO Library's Geneaology and Preservation Center Turns 50

CONROE, TX -- MOCO recently celebrated a milestone anniversary of an off-shoot of the The Montgomery County Memorial Library System, with a small 50th birthday party for their ‘Genealogy and Preservation Center,’ which is located at the Central Library just off I-45 in Conroe. Genealogy offers enthusiasts or retirees wanting to know the big question, ‘Where did I come from?’ And with the obvious answer of ‘From my Mother,’ there are those who still want to know who Mom’s Mom and Dad’s Dad were, and so on. The Genealogy and Preservation Center, on the second floor of the Central Library, offers many tools from a 40,000 volume collection, maps, and numerous computer and on-line resources that can help with searches to help solve some mysteries in regards to your origins.

The Center opened its doors in 1976 at the old library location where the MOCO Tax Office is on N. San Jacinto Street, near the Courthouse complex. It was then librarian Imogene Kennedy, who was its first caretaker, and working with the MC Genealogical and Historical Society, started the growth of the fledging collection into one of the more formidable genealogical centers in Texas.

Starting with just 50 books and a half-dozen microfilms, for the past two generations with the community’s support, The Center’s growth has been remarkable, and even with the setback of a 1980 fire that temporarily closed the Central Library complex, the collection continued its growth through the 1990s, with 15,000 books, and almost 10,000 rolls of microfilm. With the 1997 relocation of the current central library, to I-45, a new 5,000 sq. ft. room, allowed for a true expansion of the collection, to become a repository known for its Texas and Southern State collections.

By the early 2000s, The Center started to expand its geographic scope with additional volumes including a section dedicated to Hispanics searching for a person or family’s origins. In 2017, a Preservation Pad was added to digitize physical photos and film, so if you have legacy media from the past, The Center can take those out of date media and turn them into modern digital files. The Preservation Pad is a free public digital conversion service located on the second floor of the Central Library in Conroe, TX. It features seven specialized analog-to-digital stations to convert legacy media like photos, slides, negatives, VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and M-Discs into modern digital files. Plus there is so much more capabilities The Center can convert, with all patrons having to do is bring a USB flash drive or blank DVD-R/RW.

“The Genealogy & Preservation Center continues to thrive as an outstanding preservation center and a welcoming space for family-history research,” Genealogy Manager Cindy Amburgy said. “I am proud of the team that makes the Center such a strong resource for our community, and we are excited for the great work we will continue building together in the years ahead.”

In recent years, The Center’s cataloging projects have improved patron accessibility and again expanded the geographic scope for access to records. A Mellon Foundation grant of over a half-million dollars several years ago has allowed for the purchase of public digitization stations, which allow for high quality to digitize, print, photographic, and analog media for posterity. In addition, a media space has been installed for the recording of oral histories and community memories. The grant funding has also allowed for The Courier newspaper to be digitized from 1925 to 1983.

Judge Mark Keough during a recent commissioners court meeting proclaimed August 19th as ‘Genealogy & Preservation Center Day,’ and he invited the community to take advantage of what The Center has to offer.

As the ‘Genealogy and Preservation Center,’ heads into its next fifty years at the Central Library, it will continue to improve the accessing of information and the depositing of personal experiences in Montgomery County, and perhaps make it easier for many people to find out … Where did I come from?