Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Archives In Southern California 20240714

Inspire us to investigate and archivesur nations that among the holdings are documents going back to 1775. We have been handing out raffle tickets. That some books. Please welcome hello, im going to introduce myself. Randy will be giving most of the presentation. A little background about myself , i volunteered. After i got my ba in history in 2010 i began volunteering at the National Archives at riverside and then in 2012 i became a student archives technician at the National Archives at riverside and then i got my masters degree in library and Information Science at that same time from san jose state university. And then in 2014, i moved to st. Louis and worked at the National Archives at st. Louis as a preservation technician and then in 2016 i moved back to california and then in my current role as an archives specialist. Im going to turn it over to randy here and he can give you his bio. Thank you, james. Welcome, everybody. I want to thank mr. Garza for his wonderful introduction and i also want to thank the friends to have North Hollywood library and the sherman oaks friends of library as well for inviting us to come out here. I hope you enjoyed the earlier events. James did a great job so if you saw it, let him know that you appreciate what he did. Ok . Good job, james. So for myself, i have been with the National Archives, basically this unit in Southern California since 1985. I took a summer job as a file clerk basically just pulling the refiling materials upon customer requests. That summer job has now lasted 24 years and like i do like to tell people sometimes, im still looking for a real job. I havent grown up yet but i love doing what i do, giving the presentations, providing the access of our holdings to the public so if you were able to see the presentation earlier, james covered a lot of how to find resources at the National Archives. Im going to show you actually resources you can find in my facility as well as some of these 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 cat dog. The thing with all of these, im not going to tell thank you whole story with all of the records im going to show you. That will make it more enticing to visit our facility and find out for yourselves. So i guess ill go ahead and begin. I think weve covered that already. Introduction to resource and my facility. James and i. Theres our email addresses. If you dont jolts those down, i do have Business Cards we can give you later and we have our telephone number there. Thats our main line and if you have general requests, the email address is where you can sent my questions or requests on and off, even after tonight. We do have some social media accounts. Facebook, twitter, up the tumbler. We make about eight postings every month. And also find things to celebrate things each month. Womens history month, native American History month and things like that. We really like our exposure on social media. So if youre interested in that, you can go ahead and take out your phones, give us a like or two. I can go ahead and wait. Seriously, visit and if you enjoy them, definitely give us the likes. You can make the images, that kind of thing, ok . All right, so what do we hold . We hold a lot of stuff. A lot of cool records. We have about 71,400 cubic feet of material. Thats just our facility in riverside alone. The National Archives in general holds about five million cubic feet of original records historically valuable. What we maintain in riverside, theyre created by about 89 different federal agencies and courts located in Southern California, arizona, and clark county, nevada. We all know what clark county is, right . Las vegas. I see some heads nodding. What happens in vegas winds up in the National Archives so be careful, all right . [laughter] so in general, again texas records what that we hold document historic events, trends, and issues. Actions of the governments and its action with the public and documents the rights of individuals and the government. The records in our facility date from 1798 to 2003 so do we have a lot of materials that date back to the 1700s . California wasnt part of the United States until the 18 50s. What we have, its a document from an old spanish land grant that was given. Basically its an area of arizona today in 1789 this was granted to a family out there. This document here is stamped with kind of like a stamp tax. 179. Its written basically in oldworld spanish. I always thought i could read spanish and speak it pretty well. I took four years in high school, passed the a. P. Exams and everything. Does anybody know how to read old english . Its about the same thing trying to read old spanish. I got through part of it. My motherinlaw who came from mexico, she got through about three sentences and went i probably need some help but it is very pleasing to the eye, a beautiful document. Slows a little bit of history in the southwest United States. All right. So now that weve seen the oldest document we hold, im going to give you information on the oldest record that well create bade u. S. Government agency. Its a naturalization record dating back to 1851 created by the Los Angeles Superior Court but the bulk of our materials are really, after 1900 rung through about the 1970s or so. After the 1970s, mostly Court Records we hold but here are some of the other agencies we hold records for. The breaux bureau of Indian Affairs. Some of these agencies you may have heard of but after tonight, you cant say you havent heard of them. The bureau of Land Management. The immigration and Naturalization Service. The National Aeronautical and space administration. The National Park service. The u. S. Army corps of engineers. They do a lot of important work. If you look around this area, any river, channel or creek that has been encased in concrete, most likely the army corps of engineers had some work to do with that. We homed the project plans for all of that stuff. A lot of their work was done after the 1938 floods. If any of you have heard of those floods that happened throughout Southern California. The u. S. Coast guard. U. S. Customs service. U. S. District courts and u. S. Forest service. I mentioned earlier we have up to 89 different federal agencies we hold records for. This is just a drop in the bucket. Those are some of the agencies that we hold the most materials for so how are they maintained . Do we just have them in boxes on the floor, thrown all over the place, cant search for them . Theyre not arranged by topic or subjects. They were not arranged by topic, subject matter, anything like that. Not like you would find in a library. For example, records related to the second world war. A lot of stuff. In, many agent signatures were involved in creating records at this time. Records related to military bases. We keep the records in the original order in which he received them, that the agency created so that way we can see during their course of business, we can see what we were they were doing during the creation, is the constant use and maintenance of those records. Your topic of research may be covered by many different federal agencies and ill kind of show you guys that a little bit later. Ok, so a little more breakdown. If you attended the presentation earlier, youve heard some of this but ill go ahead and go over it again. Each federal agency will have its own number that identifies the body of records created by a certain federal agency. Each federal agency may have a handful to dozens of offices or creator. And then within each one of those creators, they may have had dozens of collections or series of records. So, for example, the immigration Naturalization Service, now called the u. S. Citizenship and immigration service. So the old i. N. S. They would have had offices at every port of entry, along the border, the coast, airports and even in places like bakersfield. All of a sudden odd, right, bakersfield . It happens. So if you think of it. That agency at a certain time couch had hundreds of offices. And all those little offices are creating records and within nose records they create different little records. For example, chinese exclusion case files or alien case files or alien registration case files so a series of records can be comprised of as little as one page or item to tens of thousands of cubic feet of material. We have some records series that are a very small box and we have one series of Court Records by the los angeles court. Its well over 20,000 cubic feet. 20,000 cubic feet over about 100 years. A lot of material. And agencies dont also make a subjects or a topic. Second world war, first world war. They create records and files according to a scheme that works best for their business purposes. They might be alphabetical by code or title or numeric by a code or title. Those agencies in los angeles are indexed by parties. Sometimes researchers want to look for any sort of lawsuit that had to do with copyright. Who are the parties involved, what are the case numbers . I dont know. Lets look for the case numbers, well try to find out that stuff. Filed by case number. Not by type of record, not by type of lawsuit but we have pretty good indexes, things like that. We can help you find stuff pretty quickly. Back to the list, record agencies. Here are some number groups that go with nose agencies. I dont expect you to know all of this now but when you come into my facility and say i want to see everything you have in record 255. I know youve done some research and want to know about nasa. How about the breaking of the sound barrier . We have that report in our office. Pretty cool stuff and i think its also online. Looking at this. The bureau of Indian Affairs, 75. One of our most used sets of records. Immigration and Naturalization Service is seeing a large spike in research in our office right now. Look the at chinas exclusion of case files as well as japanese internees during world war ii. National park service. Record group 79. Youve all been to a National Park at some point in your life. We have records on the administration of those parks. U. S. Army corps of engineers, record 77 and you can see the rest of that list there. So every agency gets i want own number, special identifier so when i ask james, whats our record group 36, james . U. S. Customs. Well done, james. Use the microphone. Good job. Just wants to see if youre still wake over there. Good enough. So locating 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 the records off to you verbatim. I will just kind of go through them, 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 confrontation 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 . What are the names of the individuals involved . Maybe with some personal information. If you after date of birth or proximate time of birth. Where they were living and it doesnt have to be the exact address. County is final. Los angeles county, glendale, california, anything like that is perfect. Who remember the federal agencies involved if it was more than one . 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. I know he was a surveyor for the bureau of Land Management. You have a time period. 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 these may be some of the individuals youre interested in finding more about their stories. What federal agencies make involved at this point . May have been involved with some of these programs and relocation at that time . Immigration Nationalization Service had a pretty good presence immigration and Naturalization Service had a pretty good presence in that. The fbi, 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 and thats what were here to help you determine which records you actually need. So the information, the what you need to know for mr. Nakata. He lived in yuma, 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 through the united stated states you may have at that time. 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 by about our ancestprs 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 as much as system 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. Not usually a godo 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 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 u. S. Citizenship 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. Back of the page, where 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 arizona, 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 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. 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. 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 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, about 2, 3 . So, we are going to move onto to another court case. What do you need to know about this one . Names and parties. Margarita rico de sanchez and eladio rivera. We dont have a case number, and thats ok. What kind of case . A criminal case. This should be exciting. How many, show of hands, have a criminal in their background . When you find a court case 100 years ago, it is pretty neat. 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. 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 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. [laughter] not going to give it all away. So, they were charged with smuggling individuals in 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 that may 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 times. Kind of a cool case. Give some information. They came through calexico. I like the verbiage. Sometimes they did knowingly, willfully, corrupt, and full conspire. Usly a lot of words for one thing. It is all legal talk. It is cool to read the language of that time. It explains what theyre charged with. Three pages here, i will go through it really quickly. They actually had photographs in this case file of the horse and buggy that was allegedly used. Mind you, this was like 1921, not last week. See our modes of transportation back then. All the things they got out of it. Theres a lot of foodstuff in the buggy. Its kind of explained hard to see the type writing, but they talk about kitchen utensils, types of food. 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 coming into find out if their ancestors had gotten a homestead or patents. If you know what im talking about, i see people nodding. Or if theyd gotten a mining claim. My parents got a mining claim in the San Bernardino National Forest in the 1970s. 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 cool to see the 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. Then 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 transactions. Homesteads, mining, timber culture, rightsofway, 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, but it goes from probably that side to the other side, the entire project. Its hard to make a copy of, but it is neat to look at. 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 Research Interests where people want to see who the land was granted to. For 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 200 years ago. Title searches and things like that. We get title Search Companies come in to look at this. What we want to look at, Mission San Fernando and rancho la canada. We know those areas are pretty close to here. Agency involved with this, Land Management. Here is a really early survey platte with the gun. I believe this is about 1861 where 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 on mile away. A lot of times the ways these guys did this 150 years ago, its more accurate, i dont know how. With these plattes, you can see large areas that dont have axes boxes or markings on them. All of the original spanish mexican 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 letter h, meaning final homestead, cash entry, stuff like that. Each one of those has a case file somewhere. It is 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 as is if the entry person did not follow up and finish 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 covers part of old Mission San Fernando. Pretty cool stuff. The next one i have. You can see the cahuenga mountains down below. 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. 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 those records . Possibly. Ask questions and find out. Just a couple examples of some of the older records in the euro bureau of Land Management. This is interesting. The full story is on our records our facebook page. I am going to give you 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 performance appraisals and raises. If you were bad, you will have 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 and it might tell the entire story from the beginning to the sometimes quick end to your career. Dont laugh. [laughter] we are looking for an individual, Lloyd Secrest in arizona. We know that he possibly was in the bureau of Land Management, in the surveying service. 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. The correspondence files are great. If you can pick up on a name and keep following through the boxes of records, you can get pretty good stuff. Starting here, we see a letter dated march 21. 1917. To mr. Ac horton, jr. , in phoenix, arizona. At that time, mr. Horton was the assistant supervisor of surveys for the blm. 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. 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. 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 different than the last letter. 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 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 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 acting secretary of war to the secretary of interior relative to the discharge of mr. Secrest. It has gone up the chain. To secretaries of cabinets. 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 being written by the acting secretary of war, into 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, 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 to his new boss, mr. Ac 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 snowed in. He was peevish because he claimed to have return expenses anytime he saw fit to quit. His cook thought he could get money anytime he quit and go back home. Lloyd is saying he got moved three quarters of a mile northwest. With good weather, well be here about a week. Hes kind of reporting on whats going on in his camp. Unfortunately, about nine months later, there is a report here that they were at certain spots doing surveying and mr. Secrest slipped 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 records 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. 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. They come in to look at Current Events or historical trends. Events or issues. Medical things. Epidemics. Education. And you will find later, sports. I only had a few examples of some of these records for you. Again, not only the bureau of Indian 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 on different reservations in Southern California. We are going to look at a 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 put 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 ten minutes early. I will talk really slow. [laughter] how many of you are College Football fans . How many of you are 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 records of the bureau of Indian Affairs to see if you can get a what you can get ahold of. 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 in regard to terms. We will play usc in 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 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 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 . Ivy league school. With football, does the name warner ring any bells . Pop warner. William warners brother. 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. 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 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 no third party gets the lions share of the receipts as has been the custom in the past. So no ticket scalpers. We have arranged with warner of cornell. 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. 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 with 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. Please arrange to come. Will you also tell alex . Im telling you. Bring some other kids and well 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. Wethey already secured warner again, weve already secured warner from cornell. They keep playing that card. Well be pleased to hear from you soon. 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. And i was corrected in the pronunciation on this name. I was told by somebody who lives near that, it is Willamette University at salem. They keep filling the schedule with some pretty good games to play. Please let us know if you want to play us. 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 online resources, usc did not beat sherman once. They played four times. Im a trojan fan. It hurts a little bit. [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 other years, they were destroying other teams. This little boarding school from riverside came in and they were playing ball. Games. Stanford, they were 11. Five games. Stanford, they were 11. They won 50 one game and lost 64. They couldnt beat berkeley. They could not Beat University of 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. 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 questions. Of course. Do you have the archives up 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 stay with the creating agency until the individual is about 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. 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. The most recent materials are 2003. We have the 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. 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 custody 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. Yes, i usually give the tours at the facility. Usually, it is a genealogical group. 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 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 . Oh, yeah, when you come in to do research, you are touching the original documents. Im guessing you did not see jamess earlier presentation. When you come into the facility, you get 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 the arizona territorial Court Records dated 1912 and prior. I think the earliest record for those courts is 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 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 some naturalizations 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. Im 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 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. Every one tells its own story. Some of them are not so exciting like 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 late 1880s, indian scout related records. San carlos agency. It goes up through early 1980s for most of our collection. Earliest is about for textual records. Then we have microfilms that date back to the 1860s. We have things on treaties and stuff, but not original records. Microfilm. Thank you. Ok, youre welcome. I have a question on military records. If you send back for 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. 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 Jacket . 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 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. 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. It said he was in world war ii, so he won two ribbons. For campaigns there. It is remarkable. And it didnt take that long. 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 . 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 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. Thank you. I know there has got to be more. Raul, im sure, has a question. [laughter] could you Say Something about records 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, senior. Senor. We dont at least in our collection, 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. The communication could still be there. I see things in spanish, i have seen things in russian, and i have seen things in italian as well. Just in the alien enemy case files and a lot of immigration materials 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 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] this is American History tv on cspan3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. Founded in 1607, jamestown was the first English Settlement in north america. Several years later, in the summer of 1619, was the first meeting of the General Assembly, which established Representative Government in the colony. This weekend on American History tv, a threepart ceremony in jamestown commemorating the 400th anniversary of the First Assembly. Here is a preview. Is my belief that the citizens of virginia and have most certainly welcomed this method of establishing laws, grounded in English Common law, and Political Institutions including this newly formed president of assembly that will certainly representative assembly. Today, as we mark that First Assembly that first meeting of that General Assembly that took place on the same day years passed, someone say that as near as may be, we have brought virginia to the laudable form of justice and government that we all knew in england. I call upon my good friends and counselor, and a man that i appointed speaker for that first meeting of our General Assembly, for his recollections of that gathering. Speaker . Thank you, governor yardley. I remember when you and i, along with a few appointed counselors, folks began elected meeting together on this very date, july 30, during the torrid and sickly summer of 1619. Our first legislative session was held in the choir of the church here in jamestown, as it was the most convenient place we could find to sit. tis true, the governor appointed me from his counsel to serve as a speaker for the whole assembly, and not because of my kinship to his wife, lady temperance. Nay, but rather i was the only member of the assembly who had served as an elected lawmaker in the house of commons. I drew upon my experience there to organize our new assembly and reduce all the matters pending before it into a ready method, for the greater ease of the members. Watch the entire threepart ceremony commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first virginia General Assembly next, on the presidency, former president George H W Bushs longtime chief of staff talks about the man she knew. Jean becker worked with mr. Bush up until his 2018 death. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this program. Good evening. Im steve, with the Public Affairs staff of the library. First of all, before we start, a wonderfulve us presentation about george h w bush. We will have a question and answer afterwards. Because cspan is filming tonight, please use the microphones that we will place, one there and one to the side. That