I'm so excited about this I can hardly contain myself!!! In today's news Renee -------------------- CHESTERFIELD — One of her ancestors fought alongside Daniel Boone in the Revolutionary War. Another was a famous Indian chief in New York in the 1600s. Yet another was a clockmaker from Switzerland who came to Baltimore in 1794. "I still have hopes that one of his clocks will be in a store somewhere," said Joyce Loving, an avid genealogist and the special-collections manager at St. Louis County Library headquarters in Ladue. Loving was put in charge of the library's genealogical records in 1998. Back then, her department consisted of a single desk on the library's fourth floor. Today, she oversees a staff of 12, and the department boasts more than 50,000 books, 850 periodicals and 18,000 rolls of microfilm. Parts of the collection are on each of the headquarters' five floors. But soon the collection will get a place of its own, the latest sign of how genealogy research has boomed in recent years. The St. Louis County Library Foundation is designing a 60,000-square-foot Family Heritage Center in Chesterfield at the corner of Wild Horse Creek and Baxter roads, with the goal of opening it in 2012. It will be one of just five free-standing genealogy libraries in the country. The others are in Houston, Independence, Mo., Boston and Salt Lake City, long considered the mecca of genealogical research. "We will be on a very short list," said Ann Fleming, treasurer of the St. Louis Genealogical Society. "It's a real coup." The foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for the library, started talking about plans for a new genealogy library a couple of years ago. The foundation approached Louis Sachs, of Sachs Properties, about buying six acres of his Downtown Chesterfield development. But the idea so enthralled Sachs that he donated the land for the center, said Kathy Higgins, president of Sachs Properties. Higgins said her boss, a longtime benefactor of the arts, has also sought to preserve the region's history, naming streets and developments after settlers such as Justus Post and August Hill. Because the center is still in the design phase, officials say they don't have precise cost estimates yet. Jim Bogart, the foundation's manager, said all of the money for the new library will be raised privately. The foundation began its fundraising effort earlier this month. It hopes to break ground on the Heritage Center sometime this year. Sachs Properties may contribute to the construction costs, Higgins said. "It was the perfect fit," Higgins said.