In my previous post, I mentioned that during my trip to California, my sister and I did research at the county courthouse to find information about the previous owners of her old Victorian house. If you would like to learn more about the house, or are interested in restoring old homes, please visit my sister's new blog, Vicariously Victorian.
Title Header
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Introducing Vicariously Victorian!
In my previous post, I mentioned that during my trip to California, my sister and I did research at the county courthouse to find information about the previous owners of her old Victorian house. If you would like to learn more about the house, or are interested in restoring old homes, please visit my sister's new blog, Vicariously Victorian.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Blogging from Northern California
I'm visiting my sister and brother-in-law in California for a week, so my blogging will probably be sparse. I arrived on Friday evening and will be leaving on Saturday, Sept. 26. I'm having a blast! We went to 2 wineries yesterday in Napa Valley. Today we are just relaxing. Here are some of my favorite pics so far:
Jade Lake at Chateau Montelena Winery - St. Helena, CA
Jade Lake at Chateau Montelena Winery - St. Helena, CA
Grapes on the vine at Castello di Amorosa - Calistoga, CA
Castello di Amorosa
Cats lounging around Castello di Amorosa
Castello di Amorosa
Cats lounging around Castello di AmorosaSunday, April 26, 2009
A Helpful Southern California Obituary Resource
Just wanted to let everyone know about a helpful obituary resource for Southern California that I discovered this morning. It is the SCORP (Southern California Obituary Resource Project). I have been doing some research on my new brother-in-law's father's family (which I will post more about later) who settled in southern California in the 1940s. There are also several of my mom's Pemberton cousins/aunts/uncles who moved to southern California between the 1930s and 1960s. Trying to determine where their obituaries may be located has been somewhat stressful since southern California is so largely populated and there are sooo many newspapers. Typically, the Los Angeles Times only prints obits for the rich and famous and only short little death notices for the not-so-rich-and-famous, so I have not found it to be very helpful over the years.
On the SCORP site, I clicked on "Research Process Tutorial." Clicking on Step #1 "Develop Your Research Plan" brings you to an obituary worksheet. This form asks for the decedent's name, date of death, source for the date of death, last known address, source for the last known address, other family members that may be listed in the obituary, geographic area to search (community of last known address plus surrounding communities), newspapers that could hold the obituary, libraries that have these newspapers, queries posted, and lookups requested. This is a great tool to help you record your research plan and results.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #2 "Obtain a death certificate from vital records." I already had my brother-in-law's great-grandmother's death certificate, which told me she lived in the Los Angeles County suburb of Pico Rivera. If I hadn't had her death certificate already, this page would have given me several wonderful resources for obtaining it. This page gives the mailing addresses and website links of several county recorders in southern California, as well as the state office of vital records in Sacramento. The site also gives a link to an online description of policies and search fees for the Los Angeles County Recorder. In addition to the info for county recorders and state vital records office, there are links to online California death indexes and the SSDI, California city directories online, and online census images and transcriptions.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #3 "Look at proximity." The Community Locator came up, and I looked up Pico Rivera in the "If your relative lived in" column on the far left. I found that Pico Rivera is in the San Gabriel Valley East region of southern California. Clicking on the link for San Gabriel Valley East gave me the names of all towns and cities in that region to help me determine which southern California newspapers to search. What a relief, since there are sooo many newspapers in southern California, and I'm not otherwise familiar with the regions of the area.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #4 "Find newspapers." I then clicked on "View the newspaper listings." This brought up several holdings of newspapers from Southern California sorted by repository.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #5 "Find a repository to contact." I then chose to sort the repositories geographically by town/city where the repository is located. The two repositories for Pico Rivera did not have any further information, but the Whittier Area Genealogical Society does perform free lookups of obits pertaining to Whittier residents or those of the surrounding area. I learned from Step #3 and a quick look at Google Maps that Whittier was the nearest town to Pico Rivera and was also in the San Gabriel Valley East region of southern California.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #6 "Obtain an obituary." This gives links to several volunteer lookup services, such as RAOGK, as well as southern California message boards and CAGenWeb sites.
Overall, I thought this was a very helpful resource for determining your ancestor's region of southern Cailfornia and for the repositories and newspapers from that region.
On the SCORP site, I clicked on "Research Process Tutorial." Clicking on Step #1 "Develop Your Research Plan" brings you to an obituary worksheet. This form asks for the decedent's name, date of death, source for the date of death, last known address, source for the last known address, other family members that may be listed in the obituary, geographic area to search (community of last known address plus surrounding communities), newspapers that could hold the obituary, libraries that have these newspapers, queries posted, and lookups requested. This is a great tool to help you record your research plan and results.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #2 "Obtain a death certificate from vital records." I already had my brother-in-law's great-grandmother's death certificate, which told me she lived in the Los Angeles County suburb of Pico Rivera. If I hadn't had her death certificate already, this page would have given me several wonderful resources for obtaining it. This page gives the mailing addresses and website links of several county recorders in southern California, as well as the state office of vital records in Sacramento. The site also gives a link to an online description of policies and search fees for the Los Angeles County Recorder. In addition to the info for county recorders and state vital records office, there are links to online California death indexes and the SSDI, California city directories online, and online census images and transcriptions.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #3 "Look at proximity." The Community Locator came up, and I looked up Pico Rivera in the "If your relative lived in" column on the far left. I found that Pico Rivera is in the San Gabriel Valley East region of southern California. Clicking on the link for San Gabriel Valley East gave me the names of all towns and cities in that region to help me determine which southern California newspapers to search. What a relief, since there are sooo many newspapers in southern California, and I'm not otherwise familiar with the regions of the area.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #4 "Find newspapers." I then clicked on "View the newspaper listings." This brought up several holdings of newspapers from Southern California sorted by repository.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #5 "Find a repository to contact." I then chose to sort the repositories geographically by town/city where the repository is located. The two repositories for Pico Rivera did not have any further information, but the Whittier Area Genealogical Society does perform free lookups of obits pertaining to Whittier residents or those of the surrounding area. I learned from Step #3 and a quick look at Google Maps that Whittier was the nearest town to Pico Rivera and was also in the San Gabriel Valley East region of southern California.
Going back to the "Research Process Tutorial," I clicked on Step #6 "Obtain an obituary." This gives links to several volunteer lookup services, such as RAOGK, as well as southern California message boards and CAGenWeb sites.
Overall, I thought this was a very helpful resource for determining your ancestor's region of southern Cailfornia and for the repositories and newspapers from that region.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)