A fax machine spills out letters requesting information on deceased Baltimoreans, people with surnames such as Dorsey, Siwinski and Singletary.
The letters roll into the Central Enoch Pratt Free Library's unofficial bureau of missing persons, otherwise known as the Maryland Department. Along the information superhighway, this thoroughfare may be the old post road, but it's heavily traveled.
"In the past decade, there has been a tremendous increase in family history. People walk in off the street or they write us. We are increasingly getting requests via e-mail," said Jeff Korman, a Pratt librarian.
Babe Ruth's German cousins are trying to establish a family tree and have contacted librarians here.
Genealogy, the formal study of family descent, once seemed the province of people trying to establish their lineage to the Mayflower's passengers or people who fought in the Revolutionary War. The last decade has seen all that change. Today people want to find those elusive great-grandmothers the Daughters of the American Revolution would scarcely acknowledge.
"It all began when Alex Haley's series 'Roots' was on television. That really clicked with people. They wanted to know about their ancestors. And even though 'Roots' was about African Americans, most of the people coming in here had European origins," said Ralph Clayton, a Pratt librarian in the periodical department.
Mr. Clayton's personal specialty is African-American genealogy, particularly the area of slavery in urban areas and free blacks in Baltimore before the Civil War.
"I've had people burst into tears when I've come up with something on their family members. I am not talking just a little sob, but actual tears," he said.
On another occasion, two sisters came in for information and said they had been stumped for the past two years. Their searches revealed nothing.
"I went to a census tract and came back with a whole page of information," Mr. Clayton said.
The most difficult people to trace are the youngest. Federal census records, which always reveal the most information, are only opened to the public after 72 years. The most recent records are from the 1920 count.
"If you are born after 1920, we won't have as much information on you. Maybe a telephone book listing or a city directory. It is sad when someone young comes in and asks, 'Can you tell me something about my parents? And I have to say 'No,' " he said.
The Central Enoch Pratt Free Library at 400 Cathedral St. is not the only place to go to search for your family tree.
The Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St.; the George Peabody Library, East Mount Vernon Place; the Jewish Historical Society, Lloyd and Watson streets, all in Baltimore; and the Maryland State Archives (Hall of Records), 350 Rowe Blvd., Annapolis, are repositories of vast amounts of family documentation.
Mr. Clayton warns that filling in all the blanks on a family tree requires tremendous patience and time.
"One day you might hit the jackpot and find five good pieces of information. Then you strike out for a month," he said.
Typically, the most casual requests for family research come on weekends. Summers are also peak times, too, when people who have moved away from Baltimore return as tourists and spend some time looking up grandpa.
The bureaucratic process of obtaining birth, death and marriage certificates is also tedious. Sometimes the librarians recommend that patrons hire professional genealogists who are paid fees to locate missing ancestors.
The quest for missing family members can take on unanticipated consequences. Mr. Clayton worked patiently with a lawyer to find the descendants of a millionaire. There could be no guess work. To ensure a proper disposition of the deceased's property, the lawyer had to have unshakable proof of the blood lines.
The trail led to a Homeland residence in North Baltimore.
The woman who lived there first verified her relationship to the deceased.
At that point she was informed of her legacy.
"I don't want it. I've got enough money," she told the lawyer.