Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Archives In Southern California 20240714

This goes back to 1775. Weve been had to raffle tickets. Somell be giving away books. Inase join me at this time welcoming randy and james. [applause] i am going to introduce myself. Randy will be giving most of the presentation. I will be here for questions and answers. Ive volunteered after i got my ba in history in 2010. I began volunteering at the National Archives. In 2012, i became a student technician. Degree inasters Library Science at that same time. In 2014, i went to st. Louis and worked at the National Archives at st. Louis. In 2016, i moved back to california. Im going to turn over to randy. He can give you his bio. Thank you. Welcome. I want to thank the wonderful introduction. I want to thank our friends at the North Hollywood library and the sherman oaks friends of the library asking us to come out. I hope you enjoyed the earlier events. I have been with the national in Southern California since 1995. I took a summer job, just pulling materials upon request. That is lasted 24 years. I like to tell people i am still looking for a real job. I do love what i do. I love giving the presentations. See there able to presentation earlier, james covered how to find resources. Im going to show you resources you can find in my facility. Some of these have been posted on facebook. Used inthese have been washington dc. Others have been digitized in our catalog. This makes it more enticing to come out and visit. I guess i will begin. I think weve covered that already. This is our email address. I have Business Cards we can give you later. This is our main line. This is where you can send requests or questions you may have. We do have some social media. We have facebook. We have twitter. We make about eight postings every month. To find things that celebrate Different Things that go on each month. Like our exposure on social media. If you are interested in that, do that. And and whatnotlikes and interact. We hold a lot of stuff, a lot of cool records. We have about 71,000 cubic feet of material. Thats just our facility alone. The National Archives in general holds about 5 million cubic feet of original records. By 89 different federal agencies. We all know what clark county, nevada is. Las vegas. Youve been there. What happens in vegas winds up in the National Archives, so be careful. Hold, actions of the government, its interaction with the public, documents. Facility from our 1798 to 2003. We have a lot of materials that eight back to the 1700s . Is documents from spanish land grants that were given. If the area of arizona today. Family outanted to a there. This document is stamped. Written basically in spanish. I always thought i could read spanish and speak it well. I passed the ap exams and everything. Does anyone know how to read old english . Its the same thing trying to read old spanish. My motherinlaw, she got through about three sentences and needed help. It is very pleasing to the eye. Its a beautiful document. It shows a little bit of history in the southwest united states. Oldestt weve seen the document we own, im going to give you information on the oldest records we have created by a government agency. Its a naturalization record. The bulk of our material is ther 1900, running through 1970s. Mostly Court Records. Some of the other agencies we hold records for, the bureau of Indian Affairs. The bureau of Land Management, the immigration and Naturalization Service. Nasa. The National Park service. The u. S. Army corps of engineers. Area, look around this anything that has been encased in concrete, thats most likely the army corps of engineers. A lot of their work was done. Heard ofyou may of those floods. They happen in Southern California. I mentioned early we have different federal records. This is just a drop in the bucket. How are they maintained . They are not arranged by topic or subject. They are not arranged by topic, subject matter, anything like that like you would in the library. Manythe second world war, agencies were involved in creating records at that time. A couple of examples we would not pull out and put them back. We keep the records in the original order. Can see during the course of business what they were doing during the creation and the maintenance of the records. This may be covered by many different federal agencies. I will show you that later. Breakdown, if you attend the presentation earlier, you already heard some of this. Owne agency will have its number that identifies the body of records made by a certain federal agency. There may be a handful. We call it a creator because they created the records. They may have had dozens of collections. Example, the ins, they would about offices in every court of entry. If you think of that, the immigration and Naturalization Service had hundreds of offices. All of those different offices are creating records. The chinese exclusion case files files, aemy alien case series of records can be comprised of as little as one tens ofitem to thousands of cubic feet of material. We have some records that are a very small box. We have one series of Court Records created by the Los Angeles District Court that is over 20,000 cubic feet. Thats over about 100 years. When agencies create records, they dont always create a subject or topic. According to a scheme that works best for business purposes. They might be alphabetical or numeric. Example, those civil cases that we have from the ,istrict court in los angeles they are filed by a case number. Sometimes you have researchers that want to look for any lawsuit that had to do with copyright. Who are the parties involved . Look at the secondary research. Indexest pretty good throughout our holdings and we can help you find stuff quickly. List, hereto that are some numbers to go with those agencies. I dont expect you to understand this now. If you Say Something like i want onsee everything you have 255. I know you are interested in nasa. Weve got that report. Thats pretty cool stuff. This, this ist one of our most used sets of records. Questions come into our office. Naturalization sees a large spike in research right now. People are looking at the chinese exclusion files and the internees of japanese during world war ii. He National Parks service, had gone to the grand canyon. Weve got records on the administration of those parks. The u. S. Army corps of engineers, you can see that. Every agency gets its own number and special identifier. James k u. S. Customs. Well done. Good job. I wanted to make sure he is still awake over there. Locating records about individuals. Youvegoing to assume done some research ahead of time. We will show you some topics. We will show you some original records we have digitized and put online. Some of them exhibits. Im not going to read the records to you verbatim line by line. We will just go through the background. Up to youleave it guys if you have more questions about those records. Riverside is only a couple of hours away. Have this, you can do it by email or telephone or walking into our office. These are some the questions we will ask you. What was the historical issue you are interested in . What were the names of the individuals involved . Oryou have a date of birth approximate time of birth. Where they were living. It doesnt have to be the exact address. County is fine. Who were the federal agencies involved . This, dont know all of you may need to check some other sources to find some of that information. We can also help you locate that information. I know he was a land survey or for the bureau of Land Management. Do you have a time. . We can find some of this for you. We are really good at doing that. The first topic, what do we need to know . Aliens,r ii, enemy japanese internment. They may be some of the information your interested in finding out. Federal agencies may have been involved in these programs at that time. Immigration and naturalization had a good presence in that. Relocation. War your topic of research might cover the records of many federal agencies. Thats what we are help there to help you determine. The information, what you need to know. Yuma, arizona in 1944. He was born april 27 in san diego. The records that we found him in thethis is on exhibits in National Archives five years ago , it showed signatures of individuals. 47. Record is from group 100 his document is a statement. This is a questionnaire. Your name,ing to ask your present address, the last two addresses, he was living in arizona in 1944. Other personal information, gender, height, weight, married status. They want to know parents names. If you dont know a lot about some of your ancestors, you can put this together. So listing two individuals, a brother and a sister and saying theyre both in poston, arizona. Which, 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 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 about 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 27 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 his people, and later on he on his next page states 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. 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 service. 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 i. N. S. 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, 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, in 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. So, 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 says mr. Hiratsuka, he was a produce dealer at the time. Its got the 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 of 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 may 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 custom service. So again im just going to give you some sneak peeks on some of these records. Im going to talk first about anna may 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. Records of the immigration and nationalization service. District 16, which was los angeles. San pedro substation. Sometimes federal agencies like to have really, really long names for there 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 if you want to again check out facebook and i can wait for a moment if you want 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. Scars and things like that. Current address in the u. S. Signature in chinese 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. We would have found this record for you. 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 questioning 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 house you lived on, on which row, who lived next door to you and things like that and then theyd ask another individual who could corroborate your story and if everything matched up, you were usually in pretty good shape. You may find some of these questionnaires on two or three people in one individuals file. They go on and on. In this one theyre basically asking questions of his mop. His mom. How long she was married to her husband. What was your mothers name . I dont remember. 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. I will go through these quickly in the interest 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 found 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 be held by the the immigration and Naturalization Service, 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 information for that. Those are really good files. Got ahold of one for my stepfather. Some really good stuff. Were 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 with this record. Ok. The next topic, locating u. S. District Court Records. We will move through it pretty quickly. There is some pretty cool stuff. Again, this is one of those. What do 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 including los angeles, riverside, and santa ana. Southern district of california, san diego, arizona, phoenix, tucson. The district of nevada, las vegas. 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. Do you have to have a case number . It would be nice if you had a case number on something 90 years old. If you dont have it, we have great indexes. You can give us the name for research and we can find a record. If you know the type of case, if that one 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 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. This court case, the file itself is about six cubic feet. Several thousand pages. I wasnt going to scan it all for you. We would be here all night. Youll get to see some cool stuff. All the artwork where there was possible copyright infringement, a design patent pending, the actual design of the popsicle. And then all of the other artwork that is out there. So if you like early artwork, if you want a poster or something, you can come into our facility and you can find it. We can reproduce it for you. Nice color, electronically or paper, and you have yourself a nice poster of something you found in a court case. Pretty cool. Believe me, not all court cases are that exciting. [laughter] they are not all that exciting. They are neat, but not that exciting. And 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. So five cents for a popsicle. What are they now, about 2, 3 . Yeah, about right. [laughter] so we are going to move onto to another court case. Like i said, i am going to move quickly. What do you need to know about this one . We have names and parties. Margarita rico de sanchez and eladio rivera. Again, we dont have a case number, and thats ok. Like i said, we have indexes and we can help you find them. What kind of case . A criminal case. This should be exciting, right . A criminal case. How many, show of hands, have a criminal in their background . When you find a court case 100 years ago, it is pretty neat. It happens, i know. So when you find Something Like this, it is pretty cool. Tell many people, but it is pretty cool. And where was the case file . Los angeles, california. Again, not going to tell you the whole story on this. But here is a command for the marshal of the u. S. For the seventh 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 some cool photographs. Those i will show you later. So she had a codefendant. He was not convicted. And toave to, come and look at the court case to find out why. Im not going to tell you. [laughter] not going to give it all away. So, they were charged with smuggling individuals of chinese descent across the southern border. So with this file, if you were looking through it, you get names of all the individuals they were smuggling. And 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 that may tell their story as well. Ok . 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 times and that kind of thing. Kind of a cool case. Give some information. They explained what they did. They came through calexico. I like the verbiage. Sometimes they did knowingly, willfully, corruptly, fraudulently, and 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. So this is basically just a criminal complaint explaining what they are being charged with that goes on and on. About 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. Ok . Mind you, this was like 1921, this wasnt last week. So see our modes of transportation back then. All the things they got out of it. Theres a lot of foodstuff in the buggy. The kind of explained on their a little bit it is hard to see the typewriting, but they talk about kitchen utensils, types of food. And the next one, it says there is the box with the kitchen utensils where the revolver was found. I dont think you need 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. All right. Now public lands. This was a really well researched topic in our office. Individuals always coming in to find out if their ancestors had gotten a homestead or patents. If you know what im talking about, i see people nodding. Or if they maybe have gotten a mining claim. Early enough, my parents got a mining claim in the San Bernardino National Forest in the 1970s. 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. That was kind of cool to see their application. It made me feel a little bit old, but thats ok. So, im going to show you some examples. What just happened . I think i bumped something. Im good. Show you a couple examples. One of some early survey plattes, which are neat. Exciting to look at. Then something that is kind of a story about an employee. So 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 transactions. Homesteads, mining, timber culture, rightsofway, exchanges, transfers of ownership from federal government to private individuals or entities through 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 perpetuity. They can be five or 10 years like a mining claim. Those are usually leases, rightsofway. One of the bigger rights of way 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 of the room he laid out to the other side of the realm, covers the entire project. Its hard to make a copy of, but it is neat to look at. So the first thing we want, what do we need to know . Were going to try to figure out spanish and mexican land grants. We get a lot of Research Interests where people want to see who land was granted to 150, 200 years ago in certain areas of california. For one reason, for historical research, they want to find cool documents or follow a chain of title if they are buying a home on something that was granted 200 years ago. Title searches and things like that. It does happen once in a while, we get title Search Companies come in to look at this. What we want to look at, Mission San Fernando and rancho la canada. I see some heads nodding. We know those areas are pretty close to here. Agency involved with this, land bureau of Land Management. Here is a really early survey platte with the gun. I believe this is about 1861 where surveyors would go in and they would survey the land. Every once in a while, we see a surveying crew and they have that equipment. It looks like a tripod and looks like they are trying to pick up a tripod on mile away. A lot of times the ways these guys did this 150 years ago, its more accurate, i dont know how. It just worked that way. So with these plattes, you can see some very large areas of the land there that dont have little boxes or markings on them. All of the original spanish and mexican land grants, the surveyors never crossed into them because the land was already somebody elses land. All those little boxes 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. Gives somebodys story about how they got the land from the federal 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 finish the application process. Then we would still have that. And 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. So this one here covers part of old Mission San Fernando. Pretty cool stuff. The next one i have. Cahuenga mountains down below . See the cahuenga 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 back at the bottom, a lot more homesteading and land entries north of it. Anybody know anyone in those areas that would be interested in looking at some of those Old Homestead records . Possibly. Have to ask some questions and find out. Maybe, possibly. All right, so just a couple examples of some of the older records we have from the bureau of Land Management. This is kind of interesting. The full story is on our facebook page. I am going to give you basic information about it. Soap if you are looking for so if you are looking for somebody in your family that was a federal employee, the first place you really want to go is the National Archives in st. 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. If you were bad, you will have your writeups and things like that. Your benefits will be there. That kind of thing. But beyond that, the records of an agency can usually tell a pretty good story too. Almost on a daily basis, james and i create our own federal records. You ask us a question, we send Something Back to you, we created a federal record. Sometimes, there might be a lot of correspondence in some of the stuff and it might tell the entire story from the beginning to the sometimes quick end to your career. Dont laugh. [laughter] so we are looking for an individual, Lloyd Secrest in arizona. And we know that he possibly was in the bureau of Land Management, in the surveying service. So we have boxes and boxes of correspondent files out of the bureau of Land Management offices in phoenix and some of the smaller offices like tucson, arizona. Florence and tucson, arizona. The correspondence files are great. If you can pick up on a name and keep following through the boxes and boxes of records, you can get pretty good stuff. So starting here, we see a letter dated march 21. 1917. To mr. A. C. Horton, jr. , in phoenix, arizona. At that time, mr. Horton was the assistant supervisor of surveys for the blm. And mr. 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. Ok, harmless enough. Heres what i have done. Im 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. And 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 am at currently, my civilian address. Its actually different than the last letter. But he is getting all this information here. And he is basically just following up. He is still looking for a job. Really wants to go into the surveying service after the army. And he closes that letter, this army life could be worse, but i very much prefer surveying. Very respectfully, private Lloyd Secrest. All right, so he really wants that job when hes out of the service. So now we find a letter from lloyds dad going to the bureau of Land Management. Basically and i will go over a couple lines here. I was rather in hopes that lloyd would stay with you in urveying, but my youngest son he was 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 from him was dated august 28 and he was just a private. He is expected to be promoted. I dont know if he succeeded or not. I hope so. 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 kid to come home soon too and get a surveying job. [laughter] so we go on to some more here. So this is written by the supervisor of surveys. And he is saying enclosed here is a letter from the acting secretary of war to the secretary of interior relative to the discharge of mr. Secrest. Ok, so it has kind of gone up the chain there to secretaries of cabinets. Dont know whats happening there. Check the story on facebook if you want, or come out and visit to find some more stuff. This is being written by the acting secretary of war, going to 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 commanding general in newport news that states the soldier has not applied yet for a discharge. Thats interesting. He wants to get out of the service, he wants to survey, but he has not done whatever yet. So they are saying his organization has been greatly reduced by other discharges, so i unable to advise you more am favorably at this time. Ok, so 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 to his new boss, mr. A. C. Horton, confirming a telegram that was mailed to new mexico. You need to send a cook to chin lee. The cook had a letter from his folks that they were all sick ed income and so he leaves tomorrow. He was peevish because he claimed to have return expenses anytime he saw fit to quit. So his cook thought he could get money anytime he quit and go back home. So lloyd is saying he got moved three quarters of a mile northwest of chin lee. With good weather, well be here about a week. So hes kind of reporting on whats going on in his camp. Now unfortunately, about nine months later, there is a report here that they were at certain spots doing some surveying and mr. Secrest slipped and went down a cliff and did not survive. So if you are ever wondering what may have happened to somebody you are researching, you find that in federal records may somewhere. If they were in the service, they were an employee, civilian, or whatnot. I wont go through the whole thing. It is quite lengthy. But then you have the assistant supervisor of surveys giving out some information about him. Says that he did fall, he didnt survive. And in his very last sentence, it basically says go around rather than take a chance. Ok. [laughter] so that is a few documents out of quite a number that relate to this guy and his story. And this is put together on facebook about seven years ago by a former archivist. Spent quite a bit of time looking that story up. So check it out when you have a chance. Pretty cool stuff. All right, so, 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. That people come in people come in to find their family histories. They come in to look at Current Events or historical trends. Events or issues. Medical things. Epidemics. Education. And you will find later, sports. When i get to that example. So i only had a few examples of some of these records for you. But again, not only the bureau of Indian Affairs dealt with native american issues, especially early on. So we are looking for land allotments. Pretty important stuff. These are pieces and parcels of land given to native americans on different reservations in Southern California. We are going to look at a reservation around 1900. And 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 that were 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. Descriptions, sometimes acreage. It says the individuals name, of course it would be hard to figure that out they didnt 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 put highways and Irrigation Systems and things like that to reservations or around reservations. Some of that spills over into court cases that weve got also. So a lot of these records are looked back to see who the original landowners were and then they will look to see what happened with the land afterwards through probate and inheritance and things like that. And just a few pages. It goes on around nine or 10 pages. So the last topic, im going to and about 10 minutes early, so i will just talk really slow. [laughter] how many of you are College Football fans . Ok. How many of you are pac 12 fans . Ok. So am i. [laughter] so this is one of those where it is historic research, but you can find the names of individuals. And you will recognize some of the names in this material. So you are interested in sports at boarding schools. Native american boarding schools. And you want to find out how sports were developed for the students. Pretty good topic. Find out what the kids were doing there. You would want to start with the records of the bureau of Indian Affairs to see what you can get ahold of. I did a Facebook Post on this. I like this one, so i will give you more information tonight. 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 in regard to terms. We will play usc in los angeles on november 14. A high school going to play a college team. [laughter] all right, fair enough. Oh, it gets better. I will tell you all the details later. [laughter] ok. So here is a letter from the Sherman Institute to the president of the university of Southern California. We are endeavoring i love the language back then to arrange the football schedule for next fall. This is 1904. We desire to play with your university team. Will you kindly have a manager if early in november or late in october will suit. 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 . Ivy league school. With football, does the name warner ring any bells . Pop warner. William warners brother. Pop warner took over for william after he came out to the Sherman Institute to coach. Heres the letter to William Warner. Your terms of 1200 and expenses 1200 . 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, right . So we are going to have a lot of athletes for football. And 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. Another letter here. This is to the manager of the one Football Team at the university of california berkeley. Writing back. Theyre again, looking to set things up later in 1904. January 26, a letter he wrote about a game on christmas. In los angeles, would be a Financial Success without a doubt and i think the newspaper gossip will be controlled to your satisfaction. Ok. If you agree to play in los angeles on christmas, it will be satisfactory to us. So on and so forth. We will see that no third party gets the lions share of the receipts as has been the custom in the past. So no ticket scalpers. So we have arranged with warner of cornell to coach for us. They are saying we want to play with you, we have a great coach coming. 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. And again, they have to make an announcement that they now have William Warner of cornell coming out to coach and play. We will be pleased to hear from you with regards to this matter as soon as possible. So then they started to talk to players. [laughter] modernday recruiting. You have to love it. We want to get down to football practice promptly on the first of september. Our new coach will be here. New grounds have been prepared. Games are arranged with San Francisco and berkeley and stanford to be played early in please arrange to come. October. Will you also tell alex cortez . Im telling you. Bring some other kids and well play. So now we go out to stanford. We are making the schedule, we date be pleased to set a of november 5 play at palo alto or San Francisco, whichever would suit you best. And again, weve already secured warner from cornell. They keep playing that card. So well be pleased to hear from you soon. And i actually left some of these documents out. There is a lot more. So now we jump to 1905. Again, 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, university of washington. And i was corrected in the pronunciation on this name. I was told by somebody who lives near that school who works for us, it is Willamette University at salem. So they keep filling the schedule with some pretty good games to play. Please let us know if you want to play us. So i bet you are itching to know what some of those results were. [laughter] but with the power of the internet and wikipedia and some other online resources, usc did not beat sherman once. They played four times. Im a trojan fan. It hurts a little bit. So yeah. [laughter] 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. If you look at the teams usc played that year, they were destroying other teams. And this little boarding school from riverside came in and they played some ball. Five games. Stanford, they were 11. They won 50 one game and lost 64. And they couldnt beat berkeley. They could not Beat University of california. But 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. So at that time, james, it is all you. Come on. 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. Yes, sir, right here. You have to go to the microphone. I have two quick questions. Of course. Do you have the archives up for Northern California . We do. It is in San Francisco, San Bernardino, yes. 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 stay with the creating agency until the individual is about 100 years old. So you have to go through a freedom of information act request to get those. But if its maintained by the National Archives, the individuals are well old enough and the documents are old enough that they are open. Thank you. Youre welcome. Why do you only go to 1973 . Im sorry . You said you only go to 1973. Thats about 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. And our most recent materials are 2003. Yeah, so we have a bulk of records. Yes. Thank you. I have a question. I have been on a 10year quest looking for my late grandfathers polish passport. Ok. 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. And so 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. Of course. 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, right . Yes, he did. Ok. So at some point, he likely had to surrender his polish passport. When did he become a u. S. Citizen . Well, he came in in the early 1930s, sometime then, he officially became a citizen. Ok. If it is after the era where an alien registration case file was created for him, which is about 1940, 1941, it may have been surrendered and put in that file. Depending on when he was born, again, like the gentleman here was asking about the alien registration records, it might be in the custody of the National Archives or the custody of the immigration, or 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 want to thank you for the presentation. It was wonderful. Thank you. I have two questions. One of them is, do you give tours of the facility in riverside . I will let james answer that one. Yes, i usually give the tours at the facility. And usually, it is a genealogical group. But anyone can get a tour. Usually we want at least 10 people just to make it so there are enough people there. Yes. Same thing, i will give you my Business Card. And the other question is probably a stupid question, but do you actually get the documents to see and hold or do you get a photocopy . Oh, yeah, when you come in to do research, you are touching the original documents. Im guessing you did not see jamess earlier presentation. No, i didnt. Sorry. Its ok. But when you come into the facility, you get to handle the original records and we do have a set of rules and regulations you follow, and so on, but you do actually get to touch the records. Ok, 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 arizona Court Records . We do have the arizona territorial Court Records that are dated 1912 and prior. Going back to i think the earliest record for those courts is the 1860s. So we do have those Court Records. You do . We do. Ok, thank you. I was fascinated seeing so many of the pictures of the different documents that i did not know even existed. So im curious with all that you years thatver the youve worked there, 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 with mine. I run across so much stuff every day that i think is cool, doing reference requests for customers. Yeah, there are times where i think this is so cool and i just move on and i should have made a copy of it or Something Like that. But yeah, 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 some naturalizations for a customer. They were looking for relatives, ancestors that came in from the netherlands. And of course, their last name began with van. And our index cards, they are about three by five, in the shoeboxes about one foot long. Im going through looking for the family member, they are alphabetized. And im looking at van, van, van halen. Van halen. Oh, my goodness. That is eddie and Alex Van Halens index card for naturalization. We had had their naturalizations in our custody for years and nobody had gone to look for them. Absolutely amazing. That was one of the coolest finds i had. But like james, we have millions of pages in our collection. And every one tells its own story. Some of them are not so exciting like what we had on the screen here, but there is always a find every day. Every day we get cool stuff. Thank you. Youre welcome. [inaudible] [laughter] very cool. How far back does the bureau of Indian Affairs go . It depends on each agency we have. The earliest stuff we have, i want to say, is about late 1880s, indian scout related records, sam carlos agency, and 1980s,through early for most of our collection. Earliest is about for textual records, like i said, then we have microfilms that date back to the 1860s. The census records. 1860s . We have things on treaties and stuff, but not original records. Microfilm. Thank you. Ok, youre welcome. Are got a question about ive got a question about military records. If you send back for your authorizations or your Service Record book, what do you receive . In general, you should receive everything in your file. In general. Service record . The Service Record. Im not the expert on that, i dont work with the records. So i would expect you to get everything inside the file. I think you have to ask for it when you request. You have to say i would like everything in my service jacket, otherwise you just get certain selected things. We can look it up later to figure out what it is. So i just need if you just need to 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 and find that out for you. And i think charlotte will add to that. I will add to that question for him. 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 s signature on the back, but instead i got 116 pages for 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. And i had no idea he worked there. I had no idea of anything. And it was remarkable. I was so glad. I was reluctant at first to spend the 70 because i thought i was only going to get one page, but after i got 116 pages, i made a whole binder out of the information i got from them. And it said he was in world war ii, so he won two ribbons. For campaigns there. Badges or Something Like that, yeah. So it is remarkable. And it didnt take that long. Feel free to rearrange this question so it makes more sense. [laughter] all right. 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 . Yeah, i dont want to say yes or no. From that time period, the biggest bulk of military records we have are offices of the navy in san diego and long beach, los angeles. Maybe National Archives at college park . Probably college park with films and things like that and correspondence. I dont want to say we dont. I would be happy to i will give you a Business Card if you sent that question to me and i can take a look at the navy filing manuals and finding aids, 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. But yeah, i would be happy to look. Thats a great question. Thank you. I know there has got to be more. Raul, im sure, has a question. [laughter] could you Say Something about records or volumes of the National Archives in languages other than english . And i can ask you in spanish if you would like. [laughter] and i would understand most of it. Gracias, senor. We dont at least in our collection, we dont have a lot of records created in other languages, but we will collect in the records we have, like, for example the chinese exclusion act case files, a lot of stuff will be written in chinese. The communication could still be there. I have seen things in spanish, i have seen things in russian, and i have seen things in italian as well. Just in some of our alien enemy case files and a lot of immigration materials we have, you will see some questions and some 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. Yes. But if you know where it happened, we can help you. Because weve got regional facilities all throughout the country. If you tell me the state, i can probably tell you where it is being held. I would check ancestry also. If it is just a check for ancestry, i would go to a local library. I know it probably happened in california. So i would go to you guys . Most likely Southern California, absolutely. Be happy to help you out. Anybody else . All right. I think it is time to thank you, james and randy. [applause] thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] americaneekend on history tv, tonight at 8 00 eastern on lectures in history, the California Gold rush and the environment. America, a reel piece on an italian newspaper ,ournalist, and at sunday history of u. S. Policy towards iran and Irans Nuclear program. At 6 00, his taurean dan alpert talks about his book are we there yet the american automobile past, present, and driverless. Explore American History tv, every weekend on cspan3. The cspan cities tour concludes its look at sheridan, wyoming as a representative in the wyoming state legislature talks about the economy and infrastructure of the area. The 51st district encompasses the west half of sheridan county, all the way to the montana border. We have a little bit of everything. Bluecollar neighborhoods in my district, lots of miners who live in my district, ranchers as well. How would you describe to someone living in a different state some of the things you are concerned about regarding this district . I think the concerns i