Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Archives In Southern California 20240714

Out raffle tickets because we will be giving out friends of looksbrary and that means to lucky winners. Please join me at this time welcoming Brandi Thompson and james [applause] hi. Will introduce myself. Randy will be giving most of the presentation. I will be here for questions and answers. Just a little background. I volunteered after i got my ba in history from cal state San Bernardino in 2010, i began volunteering at the national riverside and in 2012i became a student archives in i gotnd then my masters degree in library and Information Science at the same time from san jose state , and then in 2014 i moved to st. Louis and worked at the National Archives at st. Preservation technician and then in 2016i moved back to california and in role as arc of specialist. So, i will turn it over to randy and he can give you his bio. Dy all right. Thank you, james. Welcome, everybody i want to thank mr. Karzais wonderful introduction. I want to thank the friends of the North Hollywood library and the sherman oaks friends of the library as well. I hope you enjoyed the earlier events. James did a great job. So, if you saw it, let him know you appreciate what he did. That summer job has lasted 24 years. Tell people sometimes, im still looking for a real job. I have not grown up yet. I love what i do. I love giving presentations. I love providing access to our holdings to the public you read if you were able to see the presentation earlier, james covered a lot of how to find resources at the National Archives. I will show you actual resources you can find in my facility. You may find similar things across the country. Some of these have been posted on facebook. Some of these records have also been used in exhibits in washington, d. C. And others are digitized in our catalog. I am not going to tell you the whole thing. I will show you. It will make it more enticing to visit and find out the ending of the story for yourself. I guess i will begin. I think we have covered that already. Our emailere jesses. We have our telephone there. That is our main line. Requests, there is the address you consider any questions you may have, even after tonight. We have social media. We have facebook. With twitter. We have tumblr. We make eight postings a month, usually on what our staff has found. Inalso try to find things our holdings to celebrate Different Things womens history month, native American History month, things like that. We really like our exposure on social media. Take out your phones, go ahead and give us a go ahead and can waits. In all seriousness, please visit these. If you enjoy them, definitely interacthe likes, the spirit you can like damages, that kind of thing. Ok . So what do we hold . E hold a lot of stuff a lot of cool records. We hold 71,000 records, at riverside alone. The National Archives in general is about 5 million cubic feet of original records. What we hold in riverside, they are graded by 89 federal. Gencies and courts clark county, nevada we all we all know clark county. Vegas. What happens in vegas inns up in the National Archives, so be careful. It is historic events, trends, issues, actions of the government, internet actions with the public, and document of rights of the individuals in the government. Ok . From 1798 until 2003. Do we have a lot of materials that date back to the 1700s . Of thenia was not part United States until the 1850s, some inve documents old spanish land grants that the arean, basically of two buck, arizona today. Granted to as family out there. This document here, kind of a stamp tax. It is written in old spanish. I always thought i could read spanish and speak it pretty well. I took four years in high school, past the ap exam and everything. To readbody know how old english . Is about the same thing trying to read old spanish. Motherinlaw, and was from mexico, showed her this document, she got through three sentences and went, i probably need some help. Is very pleasing to the eye. Its a beautiful document. Well over 200 years old and shows a little history in the southwest night state. United states. Ok . Now that weve seen the oldest document we hold, i will give you a Little Information on the oldest record we have created by a u. S. Government agency. It is a naturalization record dating back to 1851. The bulk of our materials are really after 1900 running. Hrough the 1970s or so after the 1970s, most of the Court Records we hold youre some of the other agencies we hold records for. Some of these agencies in may have heard of. Some of them you may not have. The bureau of land management, immigration and Naturalization Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration dutch which we all know as nasa. Randy yes. The u. S. Army corps of engineers. They do a lot of important work. If you look around this area, creekver, channel, encased in concrete, most likely the army corps of engineers had to do with that you we hold the records for all of that stuff. It a lot of their work was done after the 1938 floods. It happened through southern california. They did a lot of work to make sure that would not happen again. The u. S. Coast guard, u. S. Customs service, u. S. Districts courts, u. S. For service. I mention there are 89 federal agencies we hold records for. This is a drop in the bucket. These are the agencies we maintain most of our records for. We cant search for them. They are not arranged by topic or subject, ok . Not arranged by topic, subject matter, anything like that, not like you would find in a library to read for example, records relating to the second many war there were. Ecords at that time we keep the records in the original order. See whatway we can they were doing during the and the maintenance of those records. Again, your topic is research. It may be covered by many different federal agencies. I will show you that later. Breakdown. Re each federal agencies will have records created by a certain federal agency. Each agency may have different for creators. We call an officer in agency creators because they create the records. They may have dozens of collections. The immigration, naturalization ins, they the old would have found this at every port of entry. Even places like bakersfield. So, if you think of it, they could have had hundreds of offices. You have the records and all of those different offices are creating records, ok . They create different casections like alien files. Ok . The records can be comprised by as little as one page or item to tens of thousands of pages of material. We have one series of Court Records created by the Los Angeles District Court that is well over 20,000 cubic feet. Los angeles, civil rights case files, lawsuits. Does not happen often. Its a lot of material. World war, world war, workcreate records that best for their business purposes. They may be alphabetical or numeric. Thosen example ,ivil case files that we have they are followed by a case number. It has to do with some sort of copyright. Who are the parties involved with the case numbers . I dont know. Lets go to the indexes. Lets do some research. We will try to find out some of that stuff for you. Filed by case number. Indexes. Retty good list,ing back to that record agencies, here are numbers that go with those agencies. When you come to my facility and record Something Like group 255, how about this sound burial. This. Ind of looking at these are our most used sets of records. Record group 49 is where we send those researchers. Immigration, naturalization , there is a large spike in research right now. Experience of japanese internees during world war ii. The National Park service, record group 79. We have all been to the National Parks at some point. The grand canyon, lake mead. We have records on the administration of those parks. Every agency gets its own record. When i asked james, what is our record group 36, james . Customs. S. Randy well done, james. You and the microphone. Good job. Just want to see if youre still wake over there. Good enough. So donating records by individuals. So we were going to assume that weve already done some research ahead of time and were going to show you some topics. Going to show you some original records that we digitized. Some are online, some on facebook and some have been exhibits in the National Archives in washington, d. C. Im not going to read them verbatim line by line. Im just going to give you a little bit of the background of that record or the agency that created and it then kind of leave it up to you guys if you have more questions during the q a or again, riverside is only a couple of hours away. Come out and take a look. So when you have a consultation with an archivist, you can do it by email, telephone or by walking right into our office. So here are some of the questions well ask you or some of the information youll need. What was the historical trend, event or issue that youre interested in . What are the names of the individuals involved . Maybe with some personal information. If you have a date of birth or very approximate time of birth. Where they were living, and it doesnt have to be the exact address. County is fine. Los angeles county, glendale, california, anything like that is perfect. Who remember the federal agencies involved, if it was more than one federal agency . And if you dont know all this stuff you may need to check some other primary and secondary sources to find some of that information above. We can also help you locate some of that. A lot of times we have people come in and say i am really looking for my great grandfather. Cant find anything on him. I know he was a Land Surveyor for the bureau of land management. Do you have a time period . Yes. We can maybe find some resources for you. Were really good at doing that. So the first topic, what do we need to know . World war ii, enemy aliens and japanese internment and some of the individuals you might be researching. Maybe some of the individuals youre interested in finding more about their stories. What federal agencies may have been involved at that time . Immigration and Naturalization Service had a pretty good presence in that. Fbi, federal bureau of investigation. The war relocation authority. The u. S. District courts and the Selective Service system really among other agencies. So, as i mentioned earlier, that your topic of research might cover the records of many federal agencies. Thats what were there to help you determine which records you actually need. So the information, the what you need to know for mr. Nakata. He lived in ouma, arizona, in 1944. Born april 27, 1926 in san diego, california. And the record that we found him in, and this was actually on exhibits in the washington, d. C. National archives five years ago. It was an exhibit showing signatures of individuals. This record is from record group 147. Records of the Selective Service system and this document is a statement of United States citizen of japanese ancestry. So what these are is basically a questionnaire to find out information about an individual. Theyre going to ask, of course, what your name is, your date of birth, your present address, the last two addresses in which you were living. This gentleman was living in yuma, arizona in 1944. He gives some information about where he was living prior to that. Selanna beach, california. Vista, california. Other personal information. Gender, height, weight. Marital status. You go further down, some of the stuff, they want to know parents names. So if youre a family historian and you dont know a lot about some of your ancestors, would this be a good resource to put together for some information . And then asking about relatives living throughout the United States that you may have at that time. Is what they are being asked. So listing two individuals, a brother and a sister and saying theyre both in poston, arizona. Knowing these records, poston, arizona was one of the camps in arizona. At that time. And a little bit further, education information. We find out where this gentleman went to Elementary School and a high school. Sometimes we dont know that by sometimes we dont know that about our ancestors, but if you can get a record like there, kind of cool to find out where they went to school and then they ask for references asking your character, things like that. Wont list all the names of the people here or their occupations , but you can see what kind of information you can get on the questionnaire, and finally we sign it so we think that is completed, right . Ok. So as it turns out, questions 28 and 2 on this questionnaire didnt have enough room for him to put all of his thoughts down. Basically this individual said he would be more than willing to serve in the u. S. Army to help the u. S. Win the war. He wants to get his family out of the camps in poston, arizona. States hes a loyal citizen of the United States. He is not being permitted Civil Liberties right now. He doesnt like that, he wants that to change, stating that a true democratic form of government wouldnt do that to its people. And then later on, on the next page, he does state also that he is willing to serve his country. He may not want to bear arms but hes willing to do anything in the defense plant industry or any other capacity to help win the war. So Selective Service system, you would think this would be more like an f. B. I. Report or an immigration and naturalization record, but this is something the Selective Service system had as they were asking people about going into the draft or when they were about to be drafted and such. So moving on to the next individual. He lived in santa maria at the time, 1945. He was born in 1887 in japan. And the record that we have is an enemy alien case file on him. Its actually quite a thick file created by the records of the immigration and nationalization as much as. Ill show you a few of the examples that you would find in general in these records. Report of an alien enemy. Basic information again about yourself, personal information, next of kin, whos your spouse. Dates about when apprehended. This gentleman was apprehended on december 8, 1941. He was given to the ins in los angeles. You look further down, you can kind of see a stamp on there. It shows the date that this is being adjudicated or at least reviewed. December 7, 1945. So this entire process of that file has been going on about four years. He gives more information. How did he arrive in the country, when did he arrive. What was the name of the ship, what was the name of the shipping line, what country hes a citizen of, where in japan he was born, and so on. Asking, have you been to the u. S. Before . He said yes, 1913 and 1914. They ask other questions like why were you here and that kind of thing. And then sometimes you will get a fingerprint card with some photographs and those records. And this one is pretty common with all those records. And just to point out, these enemy alien case files also included individuals from other countries with which we were at war with at the time. Its not just individuals of japanese descent. Well have other countries represented here as well. And then we get finger prints. And then we get an f. B. I. Report. Now, just keep in mind that my office does not hold f. B. I. Records. This was a copy that was shared with the immigration and Naturalization Service and it was filed into that enemy alien case file, so different agencies working together, putting stuff together in one file and there you have it. And the report was quite long. It will list the individuals who did the investigations, any kind of evidence they collected and anything that they needed to put into this file. And if we look at the end it ratsuka was a produce dealer at the time. Its got to address where he was working. His occupation. So you get some pretty good stuff in there about an individual at that time. And again, these records are looked at at least four to five times a month in my office. People will come in and look at individuals that may have been family members or looking at it to put together like a Historical Perspective on different individuals. Moving on from there, were going to look at some other materials. These are related to chinese and chinese americans. Dating from 1883 to 1943. And were going to look at a couple of individuals you may or may not recognize the first one. Anna maw wong. And then james wong howe. And federal agencies involved with enforcing the chinese exclusion acts at that time, at least a couple were the immigration and Naturalization Service and the u. S. District courts and the u. S. Custom as u. S. Customs service. So again im just going to give you some sneak peeks on some of these records. Im going to talk first about anna mae wong. Im sure many of you know who she was. She was an actress. Information you may have about her. She lived in l. A. About 1938, and the record we found for her for you to look at is from record group 85. Nationalization and immigration service. District 16, which was los angeles. San pedro substation. Sometimes federal agencies like to have really, really long names so theyre sub offices. This record come out of the chinese exclusion act case files. And i just chose one document out of her file for you. Theres a lot more information in there for her but this one, you look at the picture, quite captivating. A Little Information on her. So this one i believe we have a couple of social media posts on her, so you want to again check out facebook and i can wait for a moment, or you can look later, either way. Whatever works best and you can see some of the stuff that we have on her. And then james wong howe. Born in 1898 in china and the information we have is he lived in l. A. About 1958. So we found records on him in a couple of different places. Records from the i. N. S. As well as records from a District Court in los angeles not too far from here and i have a few more examples out of his records for you. So this certificate was issued to mr. James wong howe as a return certificate basically saying that he could leave the country and come back at that time. It has some basic personal information, financial information, says he had a deposit of 1,000 to bank of America International branch. Says how old he is, how tall he is, identifying marks like scars. Address, his signature and u. S. With an oath and everything else. With the help of an archivist, you would come in and say i know this guy was there about 1958. You see the stamp in the lower lefthand corner where he was here in the 1930s. Sometimes we just ask you a few questions. We know a couple of tricks. We find some more records for you. So there will be a lot of questions of these individuals in these files. They would ask things like what are your names, what are all of your names . What is your birth date, who are all of your relatives. What is your married name . What does your village look like back in china . Can you tell me which how you lived on, on which row, who lived next door to you and things like that. And then theyd find another individual who could corroborate your story, and if everything matched up, you were usually in pretty good shape. In this one theyre basically asking questions of his mop. What was your fathers name . How many children do you have . What are their names . Mom. King questions of his she was born in San Francisco , how many children did you have . What was your mothers name . I dont know. Thats usually not a good answer. What was your fathers name . How many children do you have . What are their names . Where are they living . All this identifying information to be sure that the information that you were given matches everybody elses. So ill just kind of go through these quickly in the from of saving some time. So now we move to the District Courts and that question that somebody may have had that said i know he lived there in l. A. In 1958. So we formed a naturalization record for mr. Howe dated about 1958. Shows some really good information. Its basically all of his personal information, place of birth, date of birth. Name of his spouse. Where she was born. How he came to the states and anytime he was out, all of his methods of travel. Interestingly enough, if you look at the very bottom, his alien registration number. That is a really good key to get ahold of Something Like that if you can because hes also going to have an alien registration file that may be part of the National Archive system or may still be held by the u. S. Citizenship and immigration service. Again, they are now the u. S. Citizenship and immigration service. If you have any question, check with me during the q a. If we dont have the time, i can get you a Business Card or two and then you can send me a request for information on that. Those are really good files. I got one from my stepfather, some really good stuff. Back to the page, where governments, we want to have a signature. Down below, there is a signature. And if you didnt know who he was already, you would know a lot more information about him now with this record. Ok. Locatingext topic, u. S. District Court Records. We are going to move through it pretty quickly. There is some pretty cool stuff in there. Again, this is one of those. What you need to know to find these records. Here are the courts we hold records for, that is the geographic area. Central district of california, includes los angeles, riverside, and santa ana. Southern district of arizona, phoenix, tucson. The district of nevada, las vegas. Twon. Fun town. And then the arizona territorial court, 1912 and prior. I was going to ask if anybody knew why, but you cant go to the microphone right now. We can do that later. What do you need to know . In general, names of parties is what you need to know to find a court case. Do you have to have a case number . It would be nice if you had a case number on something 90yearsold. If you dont have it, we have great indexes. You can give us the name for research and we can find some case numbers for you and find a record. If you know the type of case, if that one per company or person would like to file a lot of lawsuits, we can help narrow that down. Sometimes the indexes tell us the type of lawsuit. This one in particular was a lawsuit for patent infringement. It was filed in the u. S. District court in los angeles. I will ask with a show of hands, how many like popsicles in the summer . You may or may not recognize some of the examples i am going to show you. The thing with court cases is we dont get exhibits like this all the time. Usually exhibits are given back to the parties involved, and if they choose not to take them the court disposes of them. To get examples or exhibits of some of the court cases, even artwork like this, is really fun. Really cool to see. Chose art case, i only couple of examples because the file itself is about six cubic feet. Several thousand pages. I wasnt going to scan it all for you. You would be here all night. You are going to get to see some cool stuff. All the artwork where there was some possible copyright infringement, a design Patent Pending on the actual design of the popsicle. Interesting. And then all of the other artwork that is out there. If you like early artwork, if you want a poster or something, you can come into our facility and find it. We can reproduce it for you. A nice color electronically or paper, and you have yourself a nice poster of something you found in a court case. Pretty cool. Not all court cases are that exciting. [laughter] they are not all that exciting. They are neat, but not that exciting. There is another one for you. I like the one on the bottom where everybody likes a frozen drink on a stick. Pretty cool stuff. Five cents for a popsicle. What are they now . Probably two dollars or three dollars . So we are going to move onto to another court case. What do you need to know about this one . We have names and parties. Margarita rico de sanchez and eladio rivera. What kind of case . A criminal case. This should be exciting, right . How many, show of hands, have a criminal in their background . When you find a court case 100 years ago, it is pretty neat. I know. When you find Something Like this, it is pretty cool. Where was the case file . Los angeles, california. Again, not going to tell you the whole story on this, but here is a command to the warrants, command for the marshal of the u. S. For the 7th district of california to go and put this individual, margarita, in jail for six months because she was convicted of smuggling aliens into the u. S. This one also has some exhibits and cool photographs. Those i will show you later. She had a codefendant. He was not convicted. You will have to look at the court case to find out why. Im not going to tell you. Not going to give it all away. So they were charged with smuggling individuals of chinese descent across the southern border. With this file, if you were looking through it you get names of the individuals they were smuggling. In some cases, you can take that information and go to another record group like immigration and Naturalization Service and see if they have case files created to tell their story as well. Pretty cool stuff. This one has been researched a few times. It is one of the hotter items. It has been written about a couple of times and that kind of thing. So kind of a cool case. We get some information, they explain what they did. They came through mexico. Sometimes, the verbiage they use, they did knowingly, willfully, corruptly, and full feloniously conspired to agree together. A lot of words for one thing. It is all legal talk. It is cool to read the language of that time. Three pages here, i will go through it real quick. They actually had photographs in this case file of the horse and buggy that was allegedly used. Mind you, this was like 1921, this wasnt last week. You can see our modes of transportation back then. All the things they got out of it. Theres a lot of foodstuff in the buggy. They are kind of explained. It is hard to see the typewriting, but they are talking about kitchen utensils and types of food. The next one, it says there is the box with the kitchen utensils where there revolver was found. I dont think you are needing a revolver if you are just transporting food, but i dont know. You can see some of those cool photographs of the time. Again, not every court case has these, but it is exciting when you get them. Public lands. Researchedeally well topic in our office. Individuals are always coming in to find out if their ancestors had gotten a homestead or patent. If you know what im talking about, i see people nodding. Or if they got a mining claim. My parents got a mining claim in the San Bernardino National Forest in the 70s. Held onto it for about 10 years. If you are an employee of the National Archives long enough, you get to see a record of your family come across your desk at one point. It was kind of cool to see the application. It made me feel a little bit old, but thats ok. Im going to show you some examples. What just happened . I think i bumped something. Im good. A couple examples. One of some early survey plaques, which is neat. Than a story about an employee. Some basic information about Land Ownership. If it goes from the federal hands, then it is in the public domain. You will find many land many types of land transactions. Homesteads, mining, rights of way, transfers of ownership from federal government to a private individual or entities for a homestead or patent. Usually after the transfer, the federal government is no longer involved. That is your land. You followed the guidelines. It is yours free and clear. Sometimes they can be prescribed for certain periods of time. They can be in for perpetuity. They can be five or 10 years like a mining claim. Those are usually leases, rights of way. One of the bigger rightsofway case files we have is william mulhollands project to bring water from the north down to the south. One of those maps alone, james will correct me if i am wrong, but it goes from probably that side to the other side, the entire project. It is hard to make a copy of, really difficult, but it is neat to look at. The first thing we want, what do we need to know . Spanish and mexican land grants. We get Research Interests where people want to see who land was granted to 150 to 200 years ago in california. Her one reason or another, research, they want to find cool documents, or follow a chain of title if they are buying a home on something granted 20 years ago. Title searches and things like that. What we want to look at, Mission San Fernando and rancho la canada. We know where those areas are, pretty close to here. Agency involved with this, bureau of land management. Here is a really early survey plot. It began around 1861 were surveyors would go in and survey the land. Every once in a while, we would see a survey crew and they have that equipment. Looks like they are trying to take a tripod a mile away. The ways these guys did this 150 years ago, its accurate, i dont know how. A lot of times, you can see large areas that dont have axes dont have boxes or markings on them. All of the original spanishamerican land grants, the surveyors never crossed into them because the land was already somebody elses land. All the little boxes that you see, if you could see from where you are at, you will see notations like final h, meaning final homestead, cash entry, stuff like that. Each one of those has a case file somewhere. It gives somebody story somebodys story about how they got the land from the government. We may have the record in my office. If it was a full patent and a certificate was issued, it is most likely going to be in the National Archives in washington, d. C. The reason we would have it is if the entry person did not follow up and finished the application process. Then we would have that. We have tens of thousands of these where they were either rightsofway, leases, or people just did not follow up. But you can get great information out of them. This one here covers part of old mission, san fernando. Pretty cool stuff. The next one i have. You can see the kalinga mountains down below. Again, part of mission, san fernando as well. That one has a little less detail to it. Sometimes they had a secondary copy for other reasons. This one has a little more detail to it. Rancho la canada at the bottom, a lot more homesteading and land entries north of it. Anybody know those areas that would be interested in looking at those homestead records . Possibly . Ask questions and find out. Possibly. Just a couple examples of some records we have in the bureau of land management. This is interesting. The full story is on our facebook records page. Im going to give you some basic information about it. If you are looking for somebody in your family that was a federal employee, the first place you want to go is the National Archives in st. Louis. The civilian personnel records center. That is where personnel records are kept for almost all federal employees. What you usually get with those records are going to be performance appraisals, and raises, and if you were bad, you will have write ups and things like that. Your benefits will be there. Beyond that, the records of an that tell the story as well. You ask us gay question, we send Something Back to you. Sometimes there may be a lot of correspondence. We are looking for individuals. Know he was possibly in the surveying service. We have boxes of Correspondent Bureau of lande management offices in phoenix. The correspondence files are great. You can find some pretty good stuff. March 21,letter dated 1917. At that time mr. Horton was the assistant supervisor for surveys of the blm. Secrest is writing him a letter saying i have made an application for an exam for a commission in the u. S. Engineers officers reserve corps, respectfully, lloyd secrest. Harmless enough. Years what i have done. Looking for a job. Help me out. A few months later, we have a much longer letter from him to the same guy. If you notice the letterhead at the top, army and navy, ymca. This is dated 1918. He just kind of goes through a few things. Its hard for me to give you my permanent address, because i am in the army. Here is my company, here is my unit, heres where i match currentlyam at currently, my civilian address. He is giving all the information. He is basically following up. He is still looking for a job. Really wants to go into the surveying service after the army. He closes that letter, this army life could be worse, but i very much prefer surveying. Very respectfully, private lloyd secrest. He really wants that job when hes out of the service now we find a letter from lloyds dad going to the bureau of land management. I will go over a couple lines here. My youngest son is in france, but the war news sounds good. I think we will soon get the kaiser. Lloyd does not write very often. My last letter was dated august 28 and he was just a private. He is expected to be promoted, i dont know if he succeeded or not. If hes not in france, if you write camp fremont, perhaps it would be forwarded. Here is his address at camp fremont. So i think dad wants his kit to come home and get a surveying job. [laughter] so we go on to some more here. This is written by the supervisor of surveys. He is saying, enclosed, heres a letter from the active acting secretary of war to the secretary of interior relative to the discharge of mr. Secrest. It has gone from a change. Check the story on facebook if you want to know what happened. You can come out and figure out if you can find more stuff. This is written by the acting secretary of war, into the acting secretary of the interior talking about this in 1919 about the desired discharge of Corporal Lloyd secrest. But i have to advise you, the report has been received from the general in newport news that states the soldier has not applied yet for a discharge. He wants to get out, but he has not done whatever yet. They are saying his organization has been greatly reduced by other discharges, unable to advise you more favorably at this time. The saga continues. He is still trying to get out. We find a letter dated not much later in 1919, and it is a letter from lloyd secrest, then his new boss, mr. Ac horton, confirming a telegram sent to mexico. The cook had a letter from his folks that they were snowed in. He was peevish because he claimed to have returned expenses anytime he saw fit to quit. His cook thought he coulgetd money anytime he quit and go back home. Lloyd is saying he got moved three quarters of a mile northwest. Hes kind of reporting on whats going on in his camp. Unfortunately, aboutine months ter, there is a report here that they were at certain spots doing surveying and mr. Secrest flip and went down a cliff and did not survive. If you are ever wondering what may have happened to somebody you are researching, you might find that in federal rords somewhere. If they were in the service, they were an employee, civilian, whatnot. I wont go through the whole thing. It is quite lengthy. But then you have the assistant supervisor of surveys giving out information about him. Says that he did fall, he didnt survive. In his last sentence, it basically says go around rather than take a chance. Ok. That is a few documents out of quite a number that relate to this guy and his story. This is put together on facebook about seven years ago by a former archivist. Spent quite a bit of time looking that story up. Check it out when you have a chance. Pretty cool stuff. Native american records, our next topic. It is the last topic. Some pretty interesting stuff. This is one of our most used groups of records. People come into find their family history. They come into look at Current Events or historical trends. Medical things. Epidemics. Education. You will find later, sports. I only had a few examples of some of these records for you. Again, not only the bureau of inland affairs dealt with native american issues, especially early on. We are looking for land allotments. Pretty important stuff. These are parcels of land given to native americans in southern california. We are going to look at the reservation around 1900. These records were created by the bureau of land management. And what this is, it is a beautiful document from 1913, a listing of all individuals living on the reservation that were given certain lots of land in certain areas on the reservation. It shows lot number, legal land descriptions, sometimes acreage. It says the individuals name. And their ages. This goes on quite a bit. This becomes important later on with some research when it comes to Land Ownership issues, rights of ways that were happening to highways and Irrigation Systems and things like that to reservations or around reservations. Some of it spills over into court cases also. A lot of these records are looked back to see who the original landowners were and then look to see what happened with the land afterwards through probate and inheritance. Just a few pages. It goes on around nine or 10 pages. The last topic, im going to end about nine minutes early. I will talk really slow. [laughter] how many of you are College Football fans . How many of you are packed 12 fans . Pac 12 fans . Ok. So am i. This is one of those where it is historic research, but you can find the names of individuals. You will recognize some of the names in this material. You are interested in sports at boarding schools. Native american boarding schools. You want to find out how sports were developed for the students. Pretty good topic. Find out what the kids were doing. You would want to start with the bureau of Union Affairs to see if you can get a hold of it. I did a Facebook Post on this. Early 1900s. The Sherman Institute was interested in playing College Football teams, playing against College Football teams, trying to set games up. Here is a letter where the superintendent of the school in riverside is writing to the Athletic Director of pomona college, basically saying we are getting ready to work on our schedule, we want to play your team on december 5, lets figure out some logistics. Last year, they gave pomona 50 of the proceeds, ticket sales, that kind of thing. You figure 1903, was football big back then on the west coast . Must have been. The last sentence says please let me hear from you soon on regard to terms. We will play usc on los angeles on november 14. a high school going to play a college team. [laughter] fair enough. It gets better. I will tell you all the details later. Ok. So here is a letter from the Sherman Institute to the president of the university of southern california. We are endeavoring to arrange the football schedule for next fall. This is 1904. The desire is to play with your university team. You kindly have a manager to advise us in november or late in october. They really want to play against a College Football team. Ok. Very good. I like it. So then, we have a letter around the same time period to coach William J Warner of cornell university. You have all heard of cornell, right . With football, does the name warner bring out any ring any bells . Pop warner. Pop warner took over for william after hed took over the Sherman Institute to coach. Heres the letter to William Warner. Your terms of 1200 and expenses. Must have been pretty good money back then. Including transportation from buffalo for coaching football at this school for four months ending january 1, 1905 are satisfactory and will consider the matter as arranged. I will have a firstclass ticket for you. So they really want this College Coach. You can see where this is going. So we are going to have a lot of athletes for football. We must beat berkeley and stanford this year if possible. Ok. So bringing a College Coach in to a boarding school. And we want to play against college teams. I like it already. This is to the manager of the Football Team at the university of california berkeley. Writing back again, looking to set things up later in 1904. January 26, a letter he wrote about a game on christmas. I think the newspaper gossip will be controlled to your satisfaction. Ok. If you agreed to play in los angeles on christmas, they will be satisfactory to us. So on and so forth. We will see no third party gets the lions share of the receipts as has been the custom in the past. So no ticket scuppers. We have arranged with warner of cornell. They are saying we want to play with you, we have a great coach playing. Lets leave california and go up to washington. Lets talk to the university of washington. We want to take a trip to your section and play a game at seattle next season and would prefer to play december 17th. They have to make an announcement they now have William Warner of cornell coming up to coach and play. We will be pleased to hear with you from you with regards to this matter as soon as possible. So then they started to talk to players. Modernday recruiting. You have to love it. We want to get down to football practice the first of september. Our new coach will be here. New grounds have been prepared. Games are ready for San Francisco and berkeley and stanford to be played. Please arrange to come. Will you also tell alex . So now they have kids to play. Now we go onto stanford. We are making the schedule, we would be pleased to play at palo alto or San Francisco, whichever would suit you. They already secured warner from cornell. They keep playing that card. And i actually left some of these documents out. Now we jump to 1905. They are writing to other players. Trying to get more players to come. We have arranged this year to play stanford and berkeley and los angeles. Then we go north to play at portland. The university of washington. I was correct in the pronunciation on this name. I was told by somebody who lives near that, it is will laminate university at salem. They keep filling the schedule with some pretty good games to play. I bet you are itching to know what some of those results were. [laughter] with the power of the internet and wikipedia and some other resources, usc did not beat sherman once. They played four times. I am a trojan fan. It hurts a little bit. So actually they played four times. One was a tie. Sherman scored 72 points over those games and gave up zero. The tie was 00. They were destroying other teams. This little boarding school from riverside came in and they were playing ball. Stanford, they were 11. They won 50 one game and lost 64. They couldnt beat berkeley. They could not Beat University of southern california. Not too bad for a Little School in riverside. Pretty cool. So i hope you enjoyed the examples i had for you today. Now its time for questions and answers. At that time, james, its all you. We can take questions now. Any questions you may have, if i dont know the answer, i will give it to james. You have to come closer. There we go. Right here. You have to go to the microphone. [inaudible] of course. Do you have the list for Northern California . We do. It is San Francisco. And my impression is immigration records are primarily mostly confidential. It depends on the time period. If you are looking like at alien registration case files, they stray stay with the creating agency with individuals until its 100 years old. But if its maintained by the National Archives, the individuals are well owed enough old enough and the documents are old enough that they are open. Thank you. Youre welcome. Why do you only go to 1973 . You said you only go to 1973. With the bulk of our records, they go to about the 1970s, back to about world war i era, but we do go back to the 1700s with that one document. The most recent materials are 2003. We have the bulk of records. Yes. Thank you. I have a question. I have been on a 10 year quest looking for my late grandfathers polish passport. He immigrated to the u. S. In the early 1930s. I have been able to find an american passport for him, immigration certificate. A whole bunch of stuff, but nothing of a previous nature. The question is more like, i didnt know whether you would have this information or maybe you can direct me to a source where i would be able to look into it. It is not something we would have in our office. Did he ever become a u. S. Citizen . You said he had an american passport . Ok. So at some point, he likely had to surrender his polish passport. When did he become a u. S. Citizen . He came in in the early 1930s, sometime then, he officially became a citizen. If it is after the era where an alien registration case file was created for him about 1940, it might have been surrendered and put in that file. Depending on when he was born like the gentleman here was asking about the alien registration records, it might be in the copy of the National Archives or the custody of the u. S. Citizenship and immigration services. If you want to chat with me after, i can give you a Business Card and you can send me an email and i can give you instructions on how to request those. I can do that for you. Thank you. I just want to thank you for the presentation, it was wonderful. I have two questions. One of them is, do you give tours of the facility in riverside . I will let james answer that one. I usually give the tours at the facility. Usually it is genealogical groups that use that. Usually we want at least 10 people just to make it so there are enough people there. Yes. Same thing, i can give you my Business Card. And the other question is probably stupid, but do you actually get the documents to see and hold or do you get a photocopy . When you commence with your research, you are touching the original documents. Im guessing you did not see jamess earlier presentation. When you come into the facility, you got to handle the records and we do have a set of rules and regulations to follow, but you do actually get to touch the records. Thank you. Youre welcome. Was the start date for the arizona collection, was it because it was one of the last states to come into the union . The Court Records . We do have arizona territorial Court Records dated to 1900 and prior. We have the early records from the 1860s. We do have those Court Records. We do. I was fascinated seeing so many pictures of the different documents that i did not know even existed. Im curious with all that you have seen, is there anything that sticks out in your mind that this is really cool and i did not know this was around . I will let you answer first and then i will go with my. With mine. I run across so much stuff every day that i think is cool, just doing reference requests for customers. There are times where i think it is so cool and that i just move on and i should have made a copy of it or Something Like that. But there is a lot of cool stuff that sticks out. Every day. 10 or 12 years ago, maybe a little longer, i was looking up the naturalization for a customer. They were looking for relatives, ancestors that came in from the netherlands. Their last name began with van. In the index cards, i would say they are three by five, in the shoeboxes about one foot long. Looking fothe r mily member, they are alphabetized. And im looking at van, van, van halen. My goodness. That is eddie and Alex Van Halens index card for naturalization. We had had them for years and nobody had gone to look for them. That was one of the coolest finds i had. But like james, we have millions of pages in our collection. Everyone tells its own story. Some of them are not so exciting like on the screen here, but there is always a find every day. [inaudible] [laughter] very cool. How far back does the bureau of Indian Affairs go . It depends on each agency we have. The earliest stuff i have i want to say is late 1880s, indian scout related records. San carlos agency. It goes up through early 1980s for most of our collection. Then we have microphones that date microfilms that date back to the 1860s. We have things on treaties and stuff, but not original records. I have questions on military records. In the Service Record book, what do you receive . In general, you should receive everything in your file. In general. The Service Record. Im not the expert on that, i dont work with the records. I would expect you to get everything in the file. I think you have to ask when you request. You have to say i would like everything in my service . Otherwise, you just get selected things. We can look it up later to figure out what it is. You just need the discharge paperwork. You can ask specifically. But as far as, i believe you should get everything, but i can be wrong and i sometimes am, thats ok. But if you want to contact me later, i can give you a Business Card. I think charlotte will add to that. I sent away for my dads military records. I thought i was going to get a onepage thing like i already had with his fingerprints and his signature, but instead i got 116 pages worth 70, and it gave me his application to join the navy, it gave me his medical records, it gave me the application and told me that he worked in new york as a steward. I had no idea he worked there. I had no idea of anything. It was remarkable. I was so glad. I was reluctant at first to spend 70 because i thought i would only get one page, but after i got 116 pages, i made a whole binder out of the information i got from. He was in world war ii, so he won two ribbons. It is remarkable. Feel free to rearrange this question so it makes more sense. [laughter] during world war ii, do you guys have any records of archives of communication between the studio heads of hollywood and the government as far as how they wanted the power of film to influence the propaganda of the public . Thats a good question. Yes. I dont want to say youre so no yes or no. From that time period, the biggest bulk of military records we have our offices of the navy in san diego and long beach, los angeles. May be National Archives at college park. Probably films and correspondence. I dont want to say we dont. I would be happy if you sent that question to me and i can take a look at the navy filing manuals and see if anything comes up. I have seen some things here and there with studios and such. I just dont know if it is that time period. I would be happy to look. Thats a great question. I know there has got to be more. Raul im sure has a question. Could you Say Something about records in languages other than and i can ask you in spanish if you would like. [laughter] and i would understand most of it. Gracias, senior. At least an hour records, we dont have a lot of records created in other languages, but we will collect for example the chinese exclusion act case files, a lot of stuff will be written in chinese. I see things in spanish, i have seen things in russian, and i have seen things in italian as well. Justin the alien enemy case files and a lot of immigration files we have, you will see some questions and answers in other languages. Did that help . Here we go. In regards to immigration and when ancestors became natural citizens, you would only have the records that happened here in california or these areas that you govern . Correct. Yes. But if you know where it happened, we can help you. We have regional facilities throughout the country. If you tell me the state, i can probably tell you where it is held. I would check ancestry also. If it is just a check i know it probably happened in california. So i would go to you guys . Most likely southern california, absolutely. Happy to help you out. Anybody else . All right. I think it is time to thank you and randy. Thank you. , this weekend, on American History tv, tonight at eight eastern on lectures in history, comparisons between Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson on the constitution. The wholee a look at cartoon, its a different impression of what people thought of johnston and the constitution at the time. It was above his ability and he was acting in, unconstitutional ways. A preview of the exhibit at the National Archives. Voters,cas first beginning in 1776 when new , the newcame a state jersey state constitution made no mention of sex when discussing voting qualifications. So women who own enough property, primarily widows and could and did vote in elections at the local, state and national levels. P. M. , author john ferro talks about nixons early life and career. He campaigned for the marshall land. He went to every rotary club, every chamber of commerce and American Legion hall. He told them he owed them his best judgment. And he convinced them. When the Apartment Party primaries were held, Richard Nixon did not just when the republican nomination, he won the democratic nomination. Our nations passed on American History tv every weekend on cspan3. In 1979, a Small Network with an unusual name rolled out a big idea, let viewers make up their own minds. Cspan opened the door to washington policymaking for all to see, bringing you unfiltered content from congress and beyond. A lot has changed in 40 years. And online, cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Reagan is an intellectual. Hes comfortable with ideas. He understands the power of ideas. With that kind of foundation, a intellectual foundation political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things. Author and historian lee edwards will be our guest on indepth. Mr. Edwards is the author of just right. Join our live conversation with your phone calls tweets and facebook questions. Watch live sunday from noon to 2 p. M. Eastern. Watch our live coverage from the national 2015 book festival on book tv on cspan two. Next on American History tv, speakers associated with Nasas Jet Propulsion Laboratory look at how the lab contributed to the Apollo Program and moon landings. What scientists learned about the rocks and other materials gathered during the mission. The event took place on the gpl campus in pasadena california. Welcome to Nasas Jet Propulsion Laboratory in pasadena california. I am preston dikes. Three human beings set out on a journey across a mortar dashed across a quarter of a million miles of space to the moon. Two of them sat down on a fragile set down on a fragile landing craft. For that one human being to make that small step took the focused efforts of hundreds of thousands of people