|
Types of Records for Oregon ResearchBy Connie Lenzen, CG |
|
Although six Oregon ports have welcomed immigrants - Astoria, Newport, North Bend, Portland, Reedsport, and Tillamook - no ship rolls are known to exist for any incoming vessels. The National Archives - Pacific Alaska Region currently houses the administrative records of Portland's Office of Immigration and Naturalization and that port's collector of customs. The following overview of materials found in the latter collection spotlights their particular importance for Chinese families. [1]
Since Oregon's first Chinese families came northward out of California in still-earlier decades, researchers might also check the existing passenger lists for San Francisco - the only such rolls known to be extant for a Pacific port. [2] |
|
In a western state such as Oregon, the complexity of this type of research warrants a full monograph. This essay can do little more than identify some of the guides that the researcher must use for an adequate introduction to the subject. The beginning point might be Zucker's Oregon Indians [3] The more-serious researcher will then turn to (among other resources) the archives of Hudson's Bay Company for records preceding territorial Oregon and those of the National Archives for the period following the 1843 arrival of the first U.S. Indian Agent. The HBC website, online at http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/index.html, has a catalog of holdings that can be requested on interlibrary loan. The National Archives offers two major guides to materials on Native Americans. [4] Many of these records have been filmed. Two record groups are worthy of particular note. One is Records of the Oregon Superintendency, 1848-1873. The second is the Bureau of Indian Affairs Census Rolls. [5] Agents or superintendents in charge of Indian reservations, as required by an act of July 4, 1884, usually submitted the census rolls each year. These and other relevant microfilmed collections are itemized in American Indians: A Select Catalog, online at http://www.archives.gov/publications/microfilm_catalogs/american_indian/american_indian.html. This guide provides a listing of the National Archives' microfilm publications relating to Native Americans, gives relevant background information that helps to understand each particular body of records, and then briefly itemizes the content of each roll within the series. It is indispensable for pinpointing the precise roll(s) that should be searched. An extensive number of the government's original documents relating to Oregon's Native Americans have been deposited at the National Archives-Pacific Alaska Region. For a detailed list, see Szucs and Luebking's The Archives. [6] These cited guides to National Archives materials should be available at most of the system's regional archives, as well as in the government-documents depository sections of university libraries and larger city libraries. |
|
Provisional-Government Records When Oregon's provisional government was established in the spring of 1843, it permitted inhabitants to stake out claims and survey them by the metes-and-bounds method. That system ended in 1848, when Congress established the Territory of Oregon. The provisional claims have been abstracted and published by the Genealogical Forum of Oregon. [7] Federal Records Oregon Territory came into the United States as part of the nation's public domain. As such, its land was surveyed on the rectangular land-survey system. The federal government dispensed tracts to individuals, and it is the federal government that maintains the records of these transactions. Citizens of the territory and state were allowed to acquire title to the government lands under several procedures that might be summarized as follows: Donation-land Claims. The federal Donation
Act of 1850 encouraged settlement of Oregon Territory by conditionally granting
(i.e., giving rather than selling) land to certain qualified individuals.
All white male citizens, or those who intended to become citizens, settling
land prior to 1 December of that year were entitled to 320 acres - provided
they cultivated and actually lived on their tracts. Wives were eligible for
an additional 320 acres. White male citizens who arrived between 1 December
1850 and 1 December 1853 could apply for 160 acres, with wives receiving an
equivalent amount. The act further provided for similar grants to those of
mixed Indian-white parentage who were already in the territory, and it required
settlers who had staked claims previously to refile them. Amendments in 1853
and 1854 cut the residency-cultivation requirement in half and extended the
filing date to April 1855.
[8]
Over seven thousand claims were filed in Oregon under
these acts. [9] The applications contain much genealogical detail. This includes
dates and places of births and marriages, names of spouses, naturalization
information, and dates of arrival in Oregon. The original claim files,
held by the National Archives, have been microfilmed as its microfilm
publication M815, Oregon and Washington Donation Land Files, 1851-1903
and are arranged by land office and final certificate number.
The files have been abstracted, indexed, and published by
the Genealogical Forum of Oregon (GFO).
[10] The GFO has a set of M815, Oregon and Washington Donation
Land Files, and will copy an ancestor's case file for researchers. Check out
the GFO research policy at http://gfo.org/respol.htm
A note: the naturalization papers were not filmed. Researchers
need to order a copy of the claim files from the National Archives in order
to obtain the naturalization papers. Request a copy of NATF Form 84, National
Archives Order for Copies of Land Entry Files by sending an e-mail to "inquire@nara.gov."
Homestead Claims. The success of the donation-land programs in Oregon (also Florida and New Mexico) prompted the passage of the more-widespread but less-generous Homestead Act of 1862. Under this act, gifts of up to 160 acres were made to persons who actually built a home on, lived on, and cultivated their designated land for a period of five years. Applicants who later wanted to purchase their lands, in lieu of fulfilling residency requirements, were permitted to do so - at which time their files were transferred to the Cash Entry collection. [11] The federal government has dispatched the original homestead
applications for Oregon to the National Archives. The files are exceptionally
rich in genealogical information. They offer the original applications (citing
residence at that time and land description), homestead proofs (consisting
of the claimant's testimony as to name, age, address, description of house,
date of building, number of family members and relationship of each, number
of acres under cultivation, and types of crops raised), and final certificates
(identifying, among other things, the address of claimant at issuance of patent).
A naturalized citizen, or someone who had filed to become such, was to submit
a copy of the proceedings. These papers identify the name and place of the
court or courts involved and the country of prior citizenship. They normally
do not cite a specific place of birth or information on ship, date, and place
of arrival.
To obtain copies of homestead and cash-entry sales, researches
need a land description. These can be acquired from later deeds, from a line-by-line
study of the appropriate tract books from the National Archives, from microfilmed
copies of the tract books that the Bureau of Land Management has provided
to the Genealogical Forum of Oregon Library, or from the abstracted volumes
often maintained by the county custodians of land records. The Bureau of Land
Management has included the Oregon donation and homestead claims on their
website, online at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/.
County Records The sale or mortgage of real property by one individual
(or corporation) to another is customarily recorded at the county level. In
Oregon, the appropriate office is usually that of the recorder or county clerk;
and convenient grantor-grantee indexes exist. Researchers who personally search
the land records maintained in the local courthouses also will find there,
in most cases, registers that abstract the U.S. land-office tract books, thereby
providing an entrance point to the federal land records. When writing to a
courthouse for information on indexes or deeds, it is usually best to address
the inquiry to Deed Records rather
than to a specific office. |
|
Although the provisional government authorized a militia to include males between the ages of sixteen and sixty, extant military records for Oregon date only from 1847. Under the laws of the new territory, created that year, only white males aged eighteen to forty-five years were eligible; but service was not mandatory. In that same year, the first Indian conflict erupted. Indians, who believed Reverend Whitman to be responsible for the diseases killing the Indians, massacred Presbyterian missionaries and a number of other pioneers at the Waiilatpu mission near Walla Walla. Retaliation by white settlers was swift, and the Cayuse Indian wars resulted. [12] Conflict between the Native Americans and the exploding pioneer population erupted in the Rogue River Indian War of 1850, Yakima Indian War of 1855, Modoc Indian War of 1872, Nez Percé War of 1877, and Bannock Indian War of 1878. Additionally, sons of Oregon saw military action in the Civil War and every national conflict since then. Territorial and State Records Genealogically valuable materials created by the Oregon Military department are available at the State Archives and cover the period 1847-1968 (principally 1847-83). They consist of correspondence, reports, public-relations releases, claim files, minutes, bonds, election returns, maps, photographs, enlistment and service records, plans, orders, medical-case records, legal-case files, muster rolls, rosters, logs, and records of residents of the Roseburg State Soldiers' Home.For a list of military records at the Archives, consult their Military Records leaflet. Oregon researchers should be particularly interested in two collections at the State Archives.
Federal Records Records created and maintained on Oregon's soldiers by the federal government are too numerous and complex to itemize in the scope of this article. Researchers seeking a quick identification of early soldiers should consult Parker and Mingus' Soldiers Who Served in the Oregon Volunteers, Civil War Period Infantry and Cavalry; [15] Meyers' Honor Roll of Oregon Grand Army of the Republic, 1881-1935, [16] and Gantenbein's Official Records of the Oregon Volunteers in the Spanish War and Philippine Insurrection. [17] For in-depth research, one should begin with the military, pension, and bounty-land sections of Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives. [18] More-specific identification of those records from each conflict that have been selected for microfilming are available in Military Service Records; A Select Catalog. [19] For identification of numerous war-and peacetime records that have not been filmed, one should study the National Archives' Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1917- [AGO] (Record Group 407) The rewards can be exceptional for individuals who pursue the full range of available resources. |
Footnotes
[1] Szucs and Luebking, The Archives, 175.
[2] A convenient source for these rolls is Louis J. Rasmussen, San Francisco Ships Passenger lists [1850-1875], 4 vols. (Colma: San Francisco Historic Record and Genealogy Bulletin, 1965-1970). Genealogists of Chinese families should also consult Christopher Howard Edson, The Chinese in Eastern Oregon, 1860-1890 (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1974).
[3] Jeff Zucker et al., Oregon Indians: Culture, History and Current Affairs, an Atlas and Introduction (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, ca. 1983).
[4] Edward E. Hill, Guide to Records in the National Archives of the United States Relating to American Indians (Washington: National Archives and Records Service, 1981), provides a 467-page overview of the records - including both those that have been filmed and those that have not. For additional detail on these records and identification of still-other material, see Hill's earlier work, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Preliminary Inventory 163, 2 vols. (Washington: National Archives and Records Service, 1965).
[5] Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940. National Archives micro publication M595. Grande Ronde, 1885-1892, 1894-1914; Klamath (Klamath, Modoc, Paiute or Snake, and Pit River Indians), 1885-1906; Klamath (Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Paiute or Snake Indians), 1907-1920; Klamath (Klamath, Modoc, Paiute, and Other Indians), 1930-1939; Roseburg (Shasta, Klamath, Pit River, Winta and other Indians), 1915-1917; Sacramento (Indians of Fort Bidwell, Round Valley, and Tule River Reservation and of Modoc County), 1934-1939; Salem (Indians of Grande Ronde and Siletz Reservations, and Non-Reservation Indians), 1933-1939; Salem (Indians of Grande Ronde and Siletz Reservation and Non- Reservation Indians), 1926-1932; Siletz, 1885-1908, 1909-1925; Umatilla (Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Indians), 1886-1894, 1896, 1898-1905, 1910-1939; Warm Springs (Warm Springs, John Day, Paiute, Tenino, Wasco and Other Indians), 1886-1891, 1895, 1897-1911, 1913-1939.
[6] Szucs and Luebking, The Archives, 197-98, 200.
[7] Provisional Land Claims (Portland: Genealogical Forum of Portland, 1982).
[8] Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives (Washington: National Archives and Records Service, 1982), 216-17; Val D. Greenwood, The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy, 2d ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1990), 335-36.
[9] Tallied by the author from the extant body of land claims.
[10] Genealogical Material in Oregon Donation Land Claims; Vol. 1, Oregon City Land Office, Claims 1-2500 (Portland: Genealogical Forum of Portland, 1957); Vol. 2, Oregon City Land Office, Claims 2501-5289 (1959); Vol. 3, Roseburg, The Dalles, and La Grande Land Offices (1965); Vol. 4, Abstracted from Rejected Applications; Oregon City, Roseburg, and The Dalles Land Offices (1967); Vol. 5, Supplement to Volume 1 [contains information on wives] (1975).
[11] For a fuller discussion, see Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives, 217; Greenwood, Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy, 338-39.
[12] Howard McKinley Corning, "Cayuse Indian War" and "Whitman Massacre" Dictionary of Oregon History: compiled from the Research Files of the Former Oregon Writers' Project with Much Added Material (Portland: Binford and Mort, 1956), 49 264.
[13] Frances Fuller Victor, The Early Indian Wars of Oregon Compiled from Oregon Archives and Other Original Sources, with Muster Rolls (Salem: Frank C. Baker, State printer, 1894).
[14] Oregon combined military alphabetical index, 1837-1933. Includes index to records from the following files: Defense Council personal military service records, 1917-1918 -- Oregon soldiers home patient histories, 1894-1933 -- Provisional and Territorial Government documents, 1837-1859 -- State Treasurer quarterly reports of estates, 1903-1913 -- Supreme Court case files, 1855-1904. Begins with film 2195418.
Oregon combined military service records index, 1852-1954. Includes indexes to the following records located in the state archives: Muster rolls index, 1852-1865 -- National Guard personnel index, 1897-1919 -- Statement of service cards, 1917-1919, 1941-1945 -- Citation cards, 1898-1924 -- Died and wounded in service cards, 1917-1919, 1941-1945, 1951-1954 -- Victory Medal application cards, 1918-1919. Begins with film 2200811.
[15] M. E. Pekar and Edna Mingus, Soldiers Who Served in the Oregon Volunteers, Civil War Period Infantry and Cavalry (Portland: Genealogical Forum of Portland, 1961).
[16] Jane Myers, Honor Roll of Oregon Grand Army of the Republic, 1881-1935 (Cottage Grove, OR.: Cottage Grove Genealogical Society, 1980).
[17] C. U. Gantenbein, The Official Records of the Oregon Volunteers in the Spanish War and Philippine Insurrection (Salem, Ore.: J. R. Whitney, State Printers, ca. 1903).
[18] Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives, Sec. B: 71-146.
[19] Military Service Records: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilm Publications (Washington: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1985).
| Home | Fees | Speech List |
© 2000-2006
Connie Lenzen, CGSM
CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.
Genealogical researchers may copy portions of this work for their own use. When you do, please include a citation to indicate that you obtained the information from this website. The current suggestion for Internet citation is to include the author, the title of the work, the URL, and the date that you downloaded the information.