Sources: Family History

The family history and genealogy industry is booming, with people now able to even analyse the DNA of their pets. In the United States and other former colonies with large populations descended from Europeans, the idea of tracing one's ancestors back to their immigrant ancestors and beyond is appealing. It helps people establish and build upon cultural connections to other countries and peoples. Researching genealogy and ancestry has its dark side, too, but most people search for their ancestors out of curiosity or to discover long-lost relatives. Because family history is often considered a topic for amateurs or retirees, it is sometimes disregarded as an important part of local history research. But that could not be farther from the truth!

Members of the Leibbrandt Family, circa 1900. [Courtesy UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

One thing that every local historian learns early on is that every town has its founding families. Depending what one may be researching, these families may be important to identify early on. When a community is first established, there is usually only a small number of individuals living there. This means that intermarriage between these families is common and frequent. Indeed, it is more unusual to find a founding family that doesn't have genealogical connections to other members of the community, and when this does occur, it is usually because of religious or cultural reasons. Even areas of research that seem too niche or obscure may have unexpected genealogical ties to the wider community that are worth noting.

Genealogy of the family of José Joaquín Castro of Rancho San Andrés, an early Spanish settler whose family married into several other prominent Californio and American families. From Ronald G. Powell, The Tragedy of Martina Castro: Part One of the History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation (Zayante Publishing, 2020).

For Santa Cruz County, there are several early families whose importance to the area's history resonates to this day. Descendants of these families still live in the county, own businesses, run for politics, and lead community groups. Perhaps the most influential family has been the McPhersons, whose progenitor, Duncan McPherson, became co-owner of the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1864. His descendants continued to run the newspaper until 1990. Meanwhile, a great grandson, Bruce A. McPherson, has served in the California State Assembly and Senate, as well as Secretary of State, and currently sits on the County Board of Supervisors. Members of the family, like most 19th century Santa Cruz families, married into several other prominent families, notably the Hinds and Miller families.

Members of the Bennett family, ca 1905. [UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

Ways of using this type of source:

Researching genealogy is unique in that one searches for specific people, sometimes outside of an obvious context. To begin any family search, one must have at minimum a name (first and last) and a date. It can be a birth or death date, a marriage date, a burial date. The options are quite broad and don't have to be exact. From a name and a date, the entire world can open up. Alternatively, nothing may happen at all. A frustrating truism for any family history researcher is that the people who are best recorded are the famous and the infamous—if a person was just normal, as most people are, it may be difficult to find a lot of information on somebody.

An unnamed family, possibly in the Soquel or Live Oak area, posing in front of their home, circa 1890. [UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

If you have a name, approximate date, and a location, then a good place to start a genealogical search is FindAGrave.com. This database compiles millions of headstones and cemetery records into one place, often with photographs of the headstones, newspaper clippings, and even photos of the deceased. It is ideal for people buried in the United States, United Kingdom, or other English-speaking countries, though it is gradually expanding beyond the Anglophone world. An account is not required, though if you create one, you can save your research. The benefit of starting with FindAGrave is that you can often fill in several blanks all at once, which can provide you with information to dig deeper. As with all genealogical websites, FindAGrave is not perfect and prone to errors, but the photographs, clippings, and gravesite details all help verify the information.

Frederick Duncan McPherson Sr.'s FindAGrave page.

Using the example of Frederick Duncan McPherson Sr.'s record, you can find a date of birth, place of birth, date of death, place of death, burial location, plot number, and several genealogical connections linked together by users based on headstone details and newspaper clippings. With this information in hand, other websites become more useful. FamilySearch.org is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who have a religious interest in family history. Members of the LDS Church also own Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and several other genealogical and genealogy-adjacent websites. From a simple search for Frederick Duncan McPherson Sr., his World War I draft registration card is available, as well as a birth record for his namesake son. This search also helpfully includes a link to the FindAGrave record and less helpfully links to the birth record for Frederick's grandson, Bruce, whose father shared the same name as his grandfather. Family members sharing the same name is one of the many difficulties a family history researcher will encounter.

Search results for historical documents relating to Frederick Duncan McPherson on FamilySearch.org.

Clicking on VIEW ALL below the first four items reveals thousands more records, some of which will relate to Frederick Sr., some to Frederick Jr., and others to completely unrelated Frederick McPhersons. Vetting these is the task of the researcher. Some of the most important sources can be census records, gathered every ten years in the United States. These can show where somebody is living, who they are living with, their relative ages, their street address, and other things that may or may not help in researching local history. FamilySearch offers scans of many important documents, including census records, marriage certificates, death notices, conscription and military files, and much more. Many of these are available anywhere, while some require special access only allowed at FamilySearch Centers, usually LDS churches. In Santa Cruz County, the only FamilySearch Center is the church in Live Oak at 220 Elk Street.

MyHeritage search results for Frederick Duncan McPherson.

As is to be expected, different websites provide slightly different resources. For the United States, Ancestry.com is generally considered the best website. It can often be accessed for free from your public library, or individuals can subscribe to the service for a fee. Ancestry provides millions of resources that can help a researcher dig deep into the genealogies of local families, connecting dots between them in ways they may not otherwise know. Street directories often show where businesses were located, while immigration records can pinpoint precisely when a person first entered the country and from where. Outside the United States, MyHeritage is often touted as a slightly better alternative, with more European-based resources. These can still be helpful for local history researchers, though, as Santa Cruz County actually has many families who immigrated from Europe and found there way to Santa Cruz in one lifetime. Therefore, their pre-US family history may be discoverable! Like Ancestry, MyHeritage requires a subscription fee to use—its free library version is less helpful than its competitor.

Results for searching for Frederick McPherson in Santa Cruz County from 1873 to 1990 on Newspapers.com.

Lastly, family history research would be significantly less valuable without using newspapers. While newspapers as a topic have already been discussed in an earlier Sources blog post, they are very important to family history research, especially if a person is proving difficult to pinpoint. Newspapers can help identify when a person lived in a place, what they did, and who they associated with. If they did anything notable, that should also appear. The best newspaper websites are Newspapers.com (subscription required) and the University of California, Riverside's California Digital Newspaper Collection.

Downsides and problems with this type of source:

The worst aspect of family history research—and one that does not get emphasized enough—is that it includes a lot of wishful thinking. Most of the primary source resources used in family history research were never meant to be used in the way family history researchers use them. Birth, marriage, and death certificates are legal documents the function to establish facts. That they include genealogical information on them is secondary. This is even more the case with census data, military records, and other government documents. Always stay skeptical when doing family history research, regardless of how reliable the source seems. Even cemetery records and obituaries can be wrong or leave out vital details. A good family history researcher will try to find at least two independent sources to prove a relationship, though this is not always possible.

Otto W. and Mary Antelman on the occasion of their 61st wedding anniversary, October 19, 1936. [UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

One extremely dangerous aspect of family history research is relying on the research of others. People are fallible and family history research is hard and time-consuming. Even if a researcher discovers a mistake, they may forget to correct it everywhere or they may simply give up on their research. Almost all genealogical websites including FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage, features user-created family trees that the website's algorithm will try to match with yours. This can be very helpful when researching leads, but never trust these other trees unquestioningly. And never merger another user's tree with yours—you never know what mistakes they've made in their research and you may not have the time to verify all of their information. It is always better to compare a user's tree and their sources and add the records manually to your own tree. It may take more time, but it ensures that your tree is of a consistent quality.

United States census record for the McPherson family, 1940.

More broadly, family history is difficult primarily because there are so many resources available and sometimes a source will look better than it is. Common names, such as Miller and Smith, are especially problematic because even a relatively small community may have multiple unrelated families with those surnames living at the same time. Add to that the tendency for English-descended families to favor John, William, Charles, and James as first names, and you may find certain branches of a family almost impossible to research with certainty. On the other hand, unique names can be both a godsend and a curse. Take for example the Leibbrandt family, owners of the most popular of the bathouses on the Santa Cruz Beach in the 1870s-1890s. This is a very unique name, so it is very easy to identify in records. However, it has been spelled inconsistently from the beginning, with even members of the family spelling it differently. It is at times Leibrandt, Liebbrandt, Liebrandt, Leibrant, Leibbrant, Libbrant, Libbrand, and more! Thus, when looking through genealogical records, all of these alternatives need to be searched. This also does not take into account text recognition errors, which may appear in both scanned documents and digitized newspapers.

The Umberger family in Santa Cruz, 1944. [UC Santa Cruz – colorized using MyHeritage]

The key takeaway is to be careful and thorough when doing family history. Family history is a vital tool for any local history researcher. It helps establish marital and ancestral relationships between families, especially founding families, and may explain otherwise strange events or unusual business partnerships. It can also reveal the origins of conflicts or feuds, as one branch of a family may have had a falling out with another. At the end of the day, family history is an important part of local history research and should not be discounted. 

Family History resources:

• FindAGrave.com – A good first stop for anyone who died in the United States or any English-speaking country. Less reliable for non-English countries but still worth a look. The information here is not always 100% reliable, but still often provides a good starting point.
• FamilySearch.org – The only entirely free family history research website, though an account is required to view anything. It includes a good selection of original documents and also features family trees from members. Some material is only available from designated Family Search Centres, which are often at LDS churches or local libraries (check the website for details).
• Ancestry.com – A subscription site that can also be accessed for free from many libraries across the Western world. Ancestry offers the best original source information for United States ancestry. Be careful not to get lost in user-created genealogies, though, as these can be very poorly cited.
• MyHeritage.com – Also a subscription site. Still useful for United States ancestry but also includes a broader selection of international sources, which can be good for tracing ancestors beyond North America. There are multiple subscription tiers, but many of these are just fluff that add little to genealogical research quality.
• Newspapers.com – Owned by Ancestry.com, this website has the largest collection of global newspaper scans (most from microfilm and microfiche) in the world. It requires a subscription but it is worth it if researching newspapers beyond California. 
• California Digital Newspaper Collection – Run by the UC Riverside as a free alternative to Newspapers.com for California. It does not include as many California newspapers but it does include some that aren't on Newspapers.com. UC Riverside provides most of the California newspapers for Newspapers.com and, after a set exclusivity period, they become available on the CDNC as well.