Author: Dayna Jacobs - "On Granny's Trail"

I am an Accredited Genealogist® professional living in California. I have been researching and teaching since 1988.

Updated California Links

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California: My Passion And My Love - Escalon Times

I’ve added a ton of new links to the “California Links” page. There are many resources specific to individual counties and cities, and quite a few immigration records for San Francisco and San Diego. There are a good number of links to newspapers for the state.

In addition to all of the digital collections for vital records, I would recommend checking out California, Local government records at the California State Archives, for an “Inventory of County and City Records Available at the California State Archives”.

Here is an example of what you can find in that resource: Stanislaus County – Probate, 1854–1941*; Bonds, Letters, and Wills, 1911–1921*; Naturalization, 1856–1978*; Deeds, 1854–1902*; Homesteads, 1860–1904*; Birth, 1873–1905*; Marriage, 1854–1920*; Declaration of Intention, 1854–1976*. While these records are not necessarily digitized (parts are included in various databases), they are available onsite at the State Archives.

If you are doing California research you’ll want to bookmark this page!

Updated Arizona Links

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I’m beginning a project to update and add new links to each of the state resource pages here on the On Granny’s Trail blog. If you are an Arizona researcher you’ll be interested to see what’s been added to the “Arizona links” page. I am pulling in my favorite links from a variety of places, including FamilySearch, state archives and libraries, and digital collections from various academic institutions around the state.

Stay tuned for updates to links for other western states in the coming weeks!

Salt Lake County mining records – a boon to anyone researching miners

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Was your ancestor a prospector? If they staked a mining claim in Salt Lake County, Utah 1863-1920 or 1976-2000, you are in luck. But even if they never set foot in Utah, this collection could benefit your research. The Salt Lake County Archives has just digitized a huge collection of mining records for the mining districts located within its boundaries. It includes

  1. Assessment Rolls, Index to Mining Claims, 1897-1938
  2. Index to Mining Abstracts, books A-F
  3. Index to Mining Deed Record, book Q
  4. Index to Mortgage Record Mining Properties, Book A
  5. Mining Claims, Index to Agreements, Book C; Power of Attorney
  6. Mining Claims, Index to Mining Location Notices, books E-F
  7. Mining Claims, Index to Patented Mines, 1898
  8. State Assessments Book B, 1977

Even if your ancestor did not mine in Salt Lake County, this collection has something for you. Take a look at the titles of the records in this collection. Did you realize these kinds of mining records existed? Do you know what kinds of mining records exist in the county where your ancestors prospected? These titles can give you some ideas for keyword searches on county and state archive sites, or in your favorite search engine.

The Salt Lake County Archives has posted an excellent guide to their collection which is also a very good overview of mining records in general. Much of it appears to have been taken from the Utah State Archives “Mining Claims“ guide. I highly recommend reading these documents to educate yourself on the ways federal mining laws impacted state and county laws and requirements.

Guide to the Mining Records at the Salt Lake County Archives, prepared by Daniel Cureton, April 15, 2021

And if your ancestor was a Utah prospector from someplace other than Salt Lake County, be sure to check out the list of Utah mining records for other counties which were processed and are housed at the Utah State Archives. These are records which are in microfilm format. Be sure to make note of the Finding Aids associated with each county’s collection.

Researching Spanish Families in Early California

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Secretary of State of California - Wikipedia

Reprinted with permission from a series of articles written by Gary Carlsen for the Monterey County Genealogy Society Newsletter, from 1997-1999.

Monterey History “They Followed Serra” part 8

Researching Spanish families in early California can be difficult at best, but the following can be extremely helpful in locating your ancestors.

Once the ancestor’s family name is located a good staring point is Marie Northrup’s two volumes, Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California, 1769-1850. The families are listed alphabetically by last name, and includes known information on the spouse and children. In many cases the children’s families are also listed. She includes a brief description of military service, taken from Bancroft’s Pioneer Index, at the end of each family.

In addition to Northrup’s volumes Dorothy G. Mutnik has put together five volumes, Some Alta California Pioneers and Descendants Division One and Two. Division One consists of three volumes and covers descendants of the Anza expeditions, while Division Two, which is two volumes covers the 1781 Expeditions to settle Los Angeles and establish the Santa Barbara Presidio. Her work was based on mission records, and the families are listed alphabetically by family name, then spouses name. She has included many notes and sites the location of the events occurring within the families.

Presidio lists of 1782 for San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco are available in the Eldrige Papers of the Bancroft Library. San Diego and Monterey were copied by Northrup and are available on LDS film 1421704, item 12.

Hubert Howe Bancroft’s 7 volume History of California notes military service and other activities when found in Spanish records. While these do not contain a lot of genealogical information, they do list places and times where the soldier was listed. Vol I and II cover the Spanish period, and III and IV the Mexican period.

1790 Padron (census) lists soldiers and their families. While the soldier and spouse are listed by name, children are listed only by sex and age. These lists are available on LDS film 1036747, and were published by Northrup in issues of the Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly.

Service records for California soldiers are stored in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain, and 900 of these records were abstracted by Raymond F. Wood. They were placed in the Research Library of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, in Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

An Alphabetical Listing of the California Mission Vital Records was recorded by Thomas Workman Temple III, and is available on LDS Micro Fiche 6047009. This listing shows the page, entry no., date, mission, book, and name.

Many of the early mission records have been microfilmed by the LDS Church, and are available through local Family History Centers including Monterey…

[NOTE: The Early California Population Project at https://www.huntington.org/ecpp is an online database of baptism, marriage, and burial records from California missions.]

Northrup, Mutnik, and Bancroft’s books are available through most libraries in California, or through inter-library loan from the California State Library in Sacramento.

Why Was the Information Removed from Online?

~ Dayna Jacobs - "On Granny's Trail" ~ 2 Comments
I am sharing an article found on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (by Dick Eastman) which I found interesting and thought you might, too.
blog.eogn.com/2020/07/28/why-was-the-information-removed-from-online/

Dick Eastman July 28, 2020

NOTE: This is a slightly updated version of an article I published four years ago. The subject arose again recently so I decided to republish this for the benefit of newer readers who did not see the earlier article. I also updated some of the text to better describe newer developments.

Several newsletter readers have sent messages to me expressing dissatisfaction with records that were available online at one time but have since disappeared. I am offering this republished article as an explanation about why we should not be surprised when that happens. I will also offer a suggestion as to making sure you keep your own copies of online records that are valuable to you.

Two newsletter readers sent email messages to me recently expressing dissatisfaction that a set of images of vital records has been removed from a popular genealogy site. Indeed, removal of any online records of genealogical value is sad, but not unusual. Changes such as these are quite common on FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Ancestry.com, Fold3, Findmypast, and many other genealogy sites that provide images of old records online. Removal of datasets has occurred dozens of times in the past, and I suspect such things will continue to happen in the future. I thought I would write a brief explanation.

Contracts

In most cases, information of genealogical value obtained from government agencies, religious groups, museums, genealogy societies, and other organizations is provided under contractual agreements. The contracts specify what information is to provided, how it is to be made available, and what price the web site owner has to pay to the provider for the records. All contracts also have a defined expiration date, typically 2 years or 3 years or perhaps 5 years after the contract is signed.

When a contract nears expiration, the two parties usually attempt to renegotiate the contract. Sometimes renewal is automatic, but more often it is not. Maybe the information provider (typically an archive) decides they want more money, or maybe they decide they no longer want to supply the data to the online genealogy service. For instance, in the time the information has been available online, the information provider may have learned just how valuable the information really is. The information provider may decide to ask for more money or may even refuse to provide the information any more since the provider may have a NEW plan to create their own web site and offer the same information online on their new site for a fee, hereby generating more revenue for the provider than that of the expiring contractual agreement.

Sure, that stinks for those of us who would like to have the information everywhere; but, it makes sense to most everyone else. I am sure the budget officer at most any state or local government archive thinks it makes sense.

Every contract renegotiation is different, but it is not unusual to agree to disagree. The contract ends, and the web site provider legally MUST remove the information from their web site. The same thing frequently happens to all the online sites that provide old records online.

GDPR

Another issue that has become a problem recently is the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). These new rules apply to all public records in Europe. These regulations arose because of the concept of the “right to be forgotten,” mostly concerning people who had legal problems in the past but have since reformed and do not want the old records to constantly create new problems. The regulations are generic and open to various interpretations. While not specifically requiring information about ancestors of 100 years ago or even earlier to be removed from public view, many people and organizations have taken a conservative approach and deleted any record sets that are even slightly questionable under the new rules.

A full discussion of the GDPR would consume hundreds or even thousands of web pages so I won’t attempt that here. Instead, you can find many online articles that address the issues created by the GDPR by starting at Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation and then moving on to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gdpr&t=hi&ia=news.

One problem for web publishers is how to create two separate services: one to display European records that comply with the GDPR and also create a second service that displays records from the rest of the world. Some web publishers have simply removed ALL records that might not comply with the GDPR regulations, regardless of the geography involved.

The moral of this story

If you find a record online that is valuable to you, SAVE IT NOW! Save it to your hard drive and make a backup copy and save it someplace else as well. If there is no option to save, make a screen shot and save it on your hard drive and save another copy, either in the cloud or some other place off-site where it will last for many years. Just because you can see the record online today does not mean that it will be available forever.