Five Fabulous Years!

Five Fabulous Years!

To celebrate the occasion I am going to share some highlights since I started my blog back in 2008.  

My profile photo in 2008

I have ancestors that are Germans from Russian who immigrated to Kansas in 1878.  I wrote about them HERE.

I have shared my seemingly never ending research story "The Problem With Pauline."  I just recently found a new document that explains so much and will follow up with a post about it very soon.

With the FGS Conference just around the corner, a couple of posts I wrote giving tips to make your experience the best ever can be found HERE and HERE.

In 2009 I came up with the idea of Genealogist trading cards which you can read about HERE.

I wrote several posts about my sister-in-law's family.  They are Jews from Bavaria who came to San Francisco in the 1850's and became a part of the "Gilded Circle" and "Reckendorf Aristocracy."

You can read about how my life intersects with the Sisters of Providence and my need for a goodly supply of "Get Out of Hell Free" cards.

Some of my lessons learned working as a professional genealogist can be read HERE, HERE and HERE.

I have shared my artistic talent with you over the years and you can read about it HERE and HERE.

San Francisco Chinatown Bubonic Plague Records

  by  ralphrepo 

I should win a prize for finding a most obscure group of records in the most unlikely place.

The place:  Special Collections at the Holt-Atherton Library, University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, California  (209) 946-2404.  

The records:  San Francisco Chinatown Residential Inspection Records from 1904.

I know, who would have thought to look in Stockton for San Francisco records!

About the records, why they were created:

Called the "Barbary Plague," San Francisco was hit with an epidemic of the bubonic plague 1900-1904.  An autopsy on a deceased Chinese man by a city health officer in 1900 reported that the man had died of the plague.  The anti-Chinese sentiment of the day caused officials to quarantine Chinatown.  After objections of the Chinese community and threatened with lawsuits, the quarantine was lifted after just a few days.  In its place, health officials ran door-to-door inspections of all the homes in Chinatown.

The 4 volumes have about 300 pages each.  Volume 1 is arranged by addresses. It describes rooms, number of inhabitants, toilets, conditions of kitchen and toilets, arrangement of rooms, entry access, stairways, etc.  The other 3 volumes are an alphabetical listing of names, addresses, occupations, children and their ages.

These records could very well be the only census type record ever taken of San Francisco Chinatown and will be a goldmine of information for anyone doing Chinese research.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress