How to research your historic property using online databases

Good evening and welcome to tonight's Historical Society of Santa Rosa's webinar. We are allowing for our participants to come into our zoom webinar this evening. I want to give you the heads up. Uh if you had any friends, relatives workmates who were preparing to watch this

presentation live streamed simultaneously on facebook live that we have had some technical difficulties and were not able to upload this presentation to facebook live this evening. A message has been placed on our facebook page at the Historical Society of Santa Rosa's facebook page uh noting that

the presentation was unable to be uploaded this evening and will be uploaded as usual to our Youtube page uh in less than 24 hours after tonight's presentation has ended. So once again, thank you so much for attending and welcome to the Historical Society of SAn Rosa's

webinar for october as more attendees and participants come in to the zoom webinar, we will get started but just to repeat once again, this was not able to be uploaded to our facebook live stream. And so the availability of this recording from tonight, this webinar will

be on Youtube and that youtube recording can also be placed on facebook but after the fact not livestreamed. So get that you can all help us get that information out there And we did put a note on our facebook page to allow people to know what

was happening with that. With that little issue of uploading the presentation. No issues here though and zoom we are all perfectly fine. Hope that your computers are working well for tonight's presentation and thanks again for joining us to have this wonderful presentation of how to research

your historic property using online databases. This evening. We are joined by Simone Crime cow, a senior library Associate of Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library and our presentation will begin shortly. Uh We also want to let you know that if you're joining us that we will

have a Q. And a session that will be after the presentation approximately starting at seven o'clock. And we'll keep it going until 7 30 if we have enough questions to allow and that Q. And A. And your questions can be keyed in to our chat room.

So please use the chat and save your questions until near the end around seven o'clock and then key in your questions and I will be facilitating those questions to our presenter. Simone Crinkle. My name is Leslie Graves. I am yours Zoom host and um see and

as we get started this evening with how to research your historic property using online databases. I'd like to introduce you to our presenter. Simone crime cow. As I mentioned earlier is a senior library associate at the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library. She holds an M.

A. In english and german literature from Heidelberg. Heidelberg University and an M. L. I. S. From the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at humboldt University. She has been with the Sonoma County Library since 2015. And she has an enormous bounty of online databases and

resources for you that she'll be sharing with you this evening. So I'm going to pass it on to Simone and she will be bringing up her zoom presentation and sharing that with you this evening, enjoy. Thanks Leslie and welcome everyone. I'm just going to go into

presenting mode here. Okay, thank you. So tonight I am going to show you how to navigate the Sonoma County Library Online resources. So this webinar will consist of three parts the library online resources part one How to find materials at the history and genealogy Library and

the Sonoma County Archives. So it's not just online resources, it's also a little bit um print and other materials and then I'm going to throw in three more free online resources that you can use from home. Before I start, I'd like to address however three misconceptions

when it comes to historic house or property research in general that you should know of misconception or miss number one is that your property has to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It has to be at least 100 years old. And or on

MacDonald Avenue. This is wrong just because your house is not a famous landmark, it does not mean it doesn't have a rich history misconception on myth. Number two is that you need a PhD or any other special skill set to get started on your journey wrong.

You can access all databases with your Sonoma County Library card um which is very easy, no PhD required and library branches even provide you with a computer if you don't have one. And misconception number three miss number three is you need to travel and you need

to spend a lot of money to find anything this is wrong to in most instances you can stay at home and all resources we are going on, I'm going to present free and the only thing you will need is some time. Um speaking of traveling, uh

some of you might know that before the pandemic hit um a lot of these online resources like ancestry were only available in a Sonoma County library building. This was with the pandemic extended to a remote access and this is still going on probably until the end

of the year and maybe even longer and um third um I'm going to start with the online resources. I cannot, since we only have an hour go into every single detail. So I'm going to give you a basic overview if you feel you want to know

more and this is not enough. I recommend my video beginner's guide to Sonoma County property research on the library's Youtube channel. I have the path down here and I think Leslie also has a link um in this, in this video, I go into more detail and

you can really follow step by step and um kind of imitate what I'm doing there and pause and stop and um go with it. Okay the Sonoma County Library Online resources, I picked four female fire insurance maps online. The ancestry library edition heritage hub, which is

fairly new. Um newspapers dot com and our Sonoma County Library digital collections. Um To access those, you need a library card. If you don't have a library card yet, go to our website. So normal library dot org scroll down. You see my cursor here and here

is the card registration. Just click on it, fill out the form and you're in so you don't even need to come in person going to go back. Um All the resources are in one place, Sonoma Library dot org. Online resources A to Z. List. And here's

the list or online resources, scroll down to historical research view all and here you find all the historical research databases that we offer summer library related. Some are not summer library subscription databases, some are not. And you can scroll down here and go, okay, do you

get this? Let's start with, female, Female is short for fire insurance maps online. This is a database with a collection of over 2000 historical fire insurance maps and land use maps covering over 500 cities in California. And I'm just going to go in here. Um if

you wonder what fire insurance maps are or Sanborns are sanborn maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents in determining the degree of hazard associated with a particular property and therefore they show the size, the shape, construction of dwellings, commercial buildings, factories, as well as firewalls,

locations of windows and doors, types of roof sprinkler systems. So there's a lot of information to be gleaned from them. The these maps are a useful tool, especially when your house was built before the late 1950s and was located inside city limits of that time. Not

current city limits, but city limits of that time. And let's just try it out. I'm going to click on interactive map and I'm going to contract myself. I mentioned Donald, you don't do not need to live on Macdonald Avenue. However, I chose a property on Macdonald

Avenue because it's just easier to find and to research. So type in your address and go, shouldn't come from. And you can see the individual maps here. Let's go first to 1950. Here's your current location and here is the San Juan Map and

you can see it's on page 13 119, click on this link And click on page 13, you can zoom in here And find it on 119 and here it is. So it shows you the outline of the house in 1950. If you don't know why is

it yellow. What are all these strange dots here, click on the key and get the key to it. Let's go back And see the same house in 1893. Show us finding it first. This time it's on page 19 in 118 zoom in And 118. What is

it here? Okay, um McDonald's here. It is. So you can see that the numbering has changed. So this is important, little detail. It's not 815, but the house looks a little different but it's the same house. Um going back, you can also download this over here,

download a jpeg of the whole page. I'm going to go back. Um here. You can see 1904 1908 which houses survived the earthquake in 1906. Pretty neat. Okay. If you're interested in more information on san juan maps the whole history, I can recommend a very short

video that's short but very informative. Um It's on Youtube and I think Leslie has the link, it's the history of the sanborn company, how it came into being Mr SAnborn himself, I forgot his first name. It's very interesting. And I recommend it. All right, let's go.

Um So maybe you um you probably know your address when you're starting out because you know where the property is or where you live. Right, But you don't have a lot of property owners names or renters and before going to the Sonoma County recorder's office, which

would be a webinar in itself. Um You might want to try newspapers dot com to find owners. Um newspapers dot com is available through the library's website, briberies website and you can see here which issues are digitized. Press democrat 1923 petaluma august courier, santa rosa Republican.

And let's just go in to see all papers, click on cr these are just local papers, not the whole database of national papers. Um Let's start with our address and if you search anything um always put the search term in

quotes so that it stays together. Otherwise you get Mcdonald's everything and we don't want that. I don't see my button here. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay you can sort by best match or oldest. First I'm going to do go down and I'm seeing something here. This looks

like an obituary. Somebody passed away at a suspect Donald. And it's Mr C. A. Right? So you already have an owner here or adventure. We don't know yet. He was a prominent center Rosen citizen and he is buried at the rural cemetery school. Talk. Sure you

let's see if there's more information on him and let's just take this one and you can see Mr Wright was had a business a store. Um I know it's a stationery store so I'm going to tell you. Um But you can also see where he worked

and that Kerekes is somehow involved. The building was didn't read through this but they have a lot of information on correct as incorrect as well. And mr Wright's business. What you can do here is you can also um add a data range if you feel you

just want to um research a particular time frame and see if we have more information. That's right hostess. Here's his store and I had another one planned. But okay if you want to let's just take this one you can print and safe here. Just click on

print and safe. Select the portion of page and draw your little frame and print or safe on your computer. Um I oops sorry. Okay okay this is just a small introduction to newspapers dot com. Um Let's go now let's go to ancestry ancestry library edition and

heritage hub. You probably know ancestry. If you are a genealogist searching for names we can also search for addresses and I'm going to show you how to do this. You'll find in the ancestry library edition. It's not the world collection or the world edition of ancestry

but it's a good basic way to start Um over 30,000 record collections. 11 billion records, census data, birth, marriage, immigration court. Um so let's go in and do a research on right and I'm going to use the sling this might look familiar to you. Um Now

we're going to search for an address and the way we do this is santa rosa and exact. And then here in the key word we put our street with the number. Oops And here we have already a couple of um results. These are the

1960s. I would like to go. All these people lived at 8-15 McDonald Avenue. I would like to go a little bit further back in time. And here we have Charles a right now we know his first name is Charles click on it. These are city directories

And here he is. 8 15 McDonald's. You can get more information on him and his company. It's interesting. Um, here's his company. Um, I can zoom in a little His business books, stationery and printing 6 15/17 4th. So it's I think pretty close to correct. Right.

Um, here he is in, just saw him. Um, he's renting 8 15 Mcdonald's which is kind of surprising. I thought he would own it. But our is renting um, everyone who are then we have eight, which means this person owned the home. There's also a B

which is a border or boarding. This was number one. I want to go number two show. Okay now I'm seeing that there is pretty much during the same time somebody called Xenia P. Rue lived there. So what's she doing there? And why is she living there?

And who is she? Um 8 15 Mcdonald's same time with spouse James. So what's going on here? We have more information. I'm going to pick the 1910 federal census and there you go. Okay. She is the mother in law, Charles is the head. Uh, we have

the wife daughter son and she lives with her son in law Charles is her son in law. Um He is also Willie who I tried to research um very interesting. I could only find that he was japanese and that he had a sister who worked at

Mableton but couldn't find any more information about him. So lots of information. Also Petit Nia's find a grave and all the census data. Okay. The library has a new and I'm not going to go into a heritage hub but it's a new database where you can

find specifically obituaries, death notices even um Social Security, death index entries. Um, try it out. It's on the same page. It's just it's not ancestry but click on heritage hub and fill out this form here with the disease names and all the information you have and

maybe the obituary is there if you're using legacy dot com and you can't find anything on legacy. I would suggest just trying heritage up and seeing if something's on there. Okay, next one up is the Sonoma County Library digital collections. Um two ways to go there.

Um also digital dot Sonoma Library dot or cheap, Which has a variety of digitized historical materials, texts, videos, audio files and most important over 45,000 historical photographs of Sonoma County from all our special collections locations. And I'm going to go in and see if I can

find a photo of 8 15 McDonald's online resources this time, go to the left digital collections always keep it in quotes and there we have the photo right house. We assumed it would be. There. It is with some information here. Okay, let's see what else

is there. This looks, this man looks familiar, click on it. So you can see that through just simple photos. You can find more information on property owners because the description tells us that this couple might be Lester M and Marie C. Belden who lived at 8:15

in 1991 when the remake of the film shadow of a doubt was filmed in Santa Rosa and Petaluma with Mark Harmon. Um this is a remake of the Hitchcock movie, I think 1942 shadow of a doubt Hitchcock movie that was remade. So here you have two

more names. Just as an example how you can find property owners names without going to the recorder's office. But I'll talk about the recorder's office later. Let's go back. There's more you can do here with um in the digital collections. Going to go back to the

landing page and um going to try sand. So first of all, if you're interested in photos, this should come up. They don't Well this is strange, mature. Let me try it again. Okay, for some

reason I know that there are photos. Um it doesn't show me any. You wanna show something. It doesn't come up. But what I wanted to show you with this is the Sonoma County local History index and the Sonoma County History index is an index to names,

places and events contained in books at the H. N. G. Library. So you can put your search term in and then go down. Oh here's a photo. There are more so I'm not really sure what's happening. Um let's just click on this one and you can

see this is the title of a book which is at the H. N. G. Library. This is the call number in former times were also called the annex. We're trying to get away from the annex. So you can come in. Um look at this book, you

cannot check it out. I'll talk about that later but you will know that this book is there at page for even Augusta masker is mentioned. So there's all kinds of information in the local history and next you can use it from home and then come in

and get the book in person with us. Okay so look out here. Okay this concludes the bass part and um let's go to the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library. Um Downtown santa rosa 7 to 5 third street adjacent to the Central santa rosa Library. You

can reach us by phone or you can shoot us an email um at the moment you can reach us by phone from the 10 to 5 monday through friday at the moment. We still have um limited opening times. I didn't put this on the slide because

I know it will be uploaded on youtube And um it's probably going to change pretty soon at the moment. We are open monday Tuesday from 1 to 3 and Wednesday thursday friday from 11 to 1. So come by and meet us. Zaida Joanna, myself and kate.

Um here you can see a couple of photos and our microfilm reader and you can find a lot of information. Um Local history, Sonoma County, local history and national and international genealogy material. I'm going to concentrate on property research tonight and I'm going to start with

our historical map collection. Um you see the map cabinet? Sonoma County map cabinet here cabinets there too. We do have santa rosa. Historical maps. Starting in 18 50 for I pulled a couple out and took a photo here. We have general maps post 1945. You can

see the bird's eye view. I think this is 18 70 ish utility maps, planning and zoning. Usgs, topographical maps, roads, bridges, buildings, everything in here. We also have physical, the physical hard copies of the sanborn fire insurance maps that you met on fi mo um here

are the dates and I took a photo of this as well and county atlases and maps with names of property owners. Um the 18 66 powers atlas 18 77 Thompson 18 98 Reynolds and Procter and this is the 19 oh eight. it's called Winkler. It doesn't

have a name, but this surveyor was Winkler and it's on our wall. So this is a huge map on the wall and um sorry for everyone watching on the phone. I know this is probably very small for you, but you can see the little parcels and

every single parcel has a owner's name on it. And we will meet these maps later when we do the David Rumsey Map Collection and you can see them a little bit better there, but we have the physical copies. Next one up is the Sonoma County aerial

photography. If you're looking aerials, especially if you hear assessors, aerials there at the History and Genealogy Library. Hope you can see my crystal. These are the assessors aerials. These are the dates, this is the finding aids for it. And you can see the plane flew over

here. So this is the flight path and shot photos Down there. Um, I think this is 1961. 1 disclaimer with this collection. Um these photos were taken from a very high altitude and you can probably see it here. So, if you're looking for details on your

houses, you can probably see the house and you can also zoom in with our scanners and we have other tools to zoom in, but you won't see every single detail. Um like sometimes it's um I know it's sometimes important to see if there was an addition

there or not and that is a little bit tricky. Um but we will look at the city of santa rosa area viewer later and you'll see, it's much easier with this. However, if you're looking for 19 fifties aerials, um, these are a little bit better. The

altitude is not as high. Um and also always check the Sonoma County Library digital collections. We just look at the photos. So when you search for an aerial, just search for whatever you're looking for Montgomery village, for example, boats and aerials. So Montgomery village areas brings

up areas of Montgomery village by the famous aerial photographer Don Meacham. So that's all digitized and in the digital collections, This one in the city and phone directories, we have the physical copies that you've already seen on ancestry and many more than there are on ancestry.

Um, phone directory, city directories, phone directories, ancestry does not have phone directories and business directories starting with 1874-1999 in print and on microfilm. Um if you know property owners names, you can look them up here, get more information if you don't not a big deal because

in 1926 the reverse directory, there's a section with a reverse, it's called reverse directory and it's probably not really can probably not really see it on this photo here is all the Street in 1926 and the numbers going down with the owners names. So if you

just know where you live or hopefully do um you can just check your address in 1926 and see who lived there in 1926. And then go back to the first part and find out more about them. Um This is as the name says a city directory,

which means it just covers city limits of that time. If your ancestors lived more rural um they will be in there too. But um under rural route, that's another part of the city directory. Um The rural routes don't have street addresses, Classic numbers and street. It'll

just give you a number. Um And you can't really do much with it. But you can go to a map. It it'll say route one and I know that this is somehow stony point, probably can't read it, but the streets are on there and it's a

stony point and you can approximately glean approximately where that person lived. Um Just, it's just not very precise, but at least, you know, it's some information, historic resource surveys and now I need to get my sheet here. This is um um So these materials, historic resource

surveys, heritage and cultural heritage surveys. Cultural district surveys information and on santa rosa. Historic neighborhoods and preservation districts. This is for you, if you are interested in a property in one of santa rosa's preservation districts. If you are interested in the history of the preservation district

itself, we have material material on all of them, Cherry Streets and Rose. Um If you are interested in um structures like railroad stations, factories, shops, churches, um and if you have property that is of historic value or architectural significance. Um this is not subjective, but it's

according to the California State Office of Historic Preservation. And in this case, if you do have this property or you're interested in one of those structures, you can go to the to And Bloomfield's Cultural Heritage Survey of the City of Santa Rosa 1989. Or then Peterson

Santa Rosa Historic Resource Survey in 1977. The Bloomfield Cultural Heritage Survey shows all properties before 1946 in the Central City. And the santa rosa Historical Society has a on their website. Um You click on the resources research tab every individual survey digitized. I don't think I

can go there. No. Okay. But you'll find every single property that was surveyed on the website. We do have a print copy of and bloomfield and then Peterson. And it's always interesting to see if your house is in there. If it's not in there, not a

big deal. It doesn't mean it's a bad house or something. They just had to decide which house to take and they could only take a limited number of houses. Um The way to find these materials is through the library catalog on Sonoma Library dot org. And

you can search either by your address, by preservation district, Cherry Street by name of business. For example, the Rosenberg department store, if you're interested by structure sent rose Church or owners names. If there was a more renowned owner, for example, the joseph T Grace Home would

be in there or the talbot house. Things like that. If you know that your house is historic but you can't make sense of its architectural style. Is it queen end or is it victorian or craftsman or what? We can recommend a field. The field guide to

american houses by Virginia mcallister. Um This one here is a little blurry. Um We do have several copies of it in the library system at library branches. We do have one copy at um at H. N. G. Um One thing I should say with the history

and genealogy Library is that it's it's a reference library, which means you cannot check out materials to give other people the chance who comes who come in also to have this material available. So unfortunately you can not check out anything but you're very welcome to peruse

in the building and you can also take photos or make copies and we even have a scanner. Next one up and our permits registers and tax assessments. I'm not going to talk um a lot. This is really getting into the nitty gritty of things. Um santa

rosa building permit records, um what you find there is a date, name and permit, whatever for whatever needed a permit. Um If you had to add a shed or there was an alteration with the house or a move and the cost. So what you would need

to know beforehand before you browse these permits is the name of the owner and an approximate date. And then you can check if there's something there something the house was altered or even maybe moved water permits. Um Also um street books will tell you when the

water was hooked up which means that there was a house present when the water was hooked up and it was probably around the building date. It's not the not always the same year but probably around it. Um If you cannot find anyone in the city directories

you might want to check the great register of voters or the tax assessments. Um Both I think on ancestry. The great register of voters is on ancestry too but we have them on microfilm and the texas investments. Both give you more information on, on owners if

you already know their names. I think the great register of voters even goes into the eye color if you're interested in that. And finally more local primary and secondary sources fill in any gaps. Um For example if you want to find out more about the owners

you already found out about where are they buried? We have the we have cemetery indexes to local cemeteries. We have the new santa rosa rural cemetery burial book that just came out. It's here. Marriage birth, death probate records. Okay. We don't have the records themselves but

we have the indexes to these records. So if your property went through probate, um it was contested or something fishy was going on, it'll be in there or you want to find out if you know one of the owners went to santa rosa high School and

you want to check out what they looked like as a senior um diaries. I have letters even here, family scrapbooks, more information on local businesses and much more. Okay, let's go to the County Archives. The library also manages the Sonoma County Archives which has a vast

collection of records created by the county government in some cases dating back to the formation of Sonoma County very early as well as other collections. I put a flyer up here and you can see the court, tax, naturalization records, deeds, mortgages, articles and so forth. You

can see there's already a couple of property research material in here and I'm sure going to show you in a minute how to find it. Um first I want to give a quick update on the archives, many of you are probably aware that the archives recently

moved from a fire prone area and under equipped facilities at Los Calico's of Highway 12 to a temporary storage location. The and these materials are now scheduled to move to um to their new space which is located on west Wind boulevard and northwest santa rosa at

the airport. They are scheduled to go to move the first week of november. And we expect to have our goal is to have all historical records available mid for public use in mid november, which means you will be able to request materials again with us. Just

call us or um shoot us an email and these materials will be made available at the history and genealogy genealogy library as well. So how would you find anything here? And you will through the online archive of California. This is the path go to Sonoma library

dot org On Louisa's screw down to historical research and online archive. Yeah. Sorry. Um Yeah. So here you can find and browse the collections, locate individual items, re descriptions and access the finding aids. I'm going to just very quickly do a property. You can search for

anything and you can see what comes up our assessor's office records, um treasure text collectors. And you can go through here um see a short description, a detailed list of contents. Click on the individual series or click on this collection guide in pdf and get more

information. So you can see here that there are assessment rolls. I just um one property files, manufactured homes and most importantly for us where where they are, if you find this too complicated or it's just too much information and I get it. It's it's a lot

of information Just give us a call. Um And we will help you find anything going back here. Uh Oops not quite. I would like also to highlight another collection that is really amazing. Um I didn't have really much time to prepare it. It's the Henrys and

Wall and Wallace collection. Um Wallace was a Sonoma County based civil engineer and surveyor and the archives house. His and his uncle's marshall Wallace's architectural drawing sir, surveys, blueprints, fields notes, maps of Sonoma County buildings. These are more buildings that are that can be private residences

that that dual build and constructed. Um We can see here is a photo of the oak nol sanitorium across the street of the former Sonoma County Hospital on Shannon Road Road and this is the original architectural drawing of it. Okay this concludes the library part. If

you have more questions. Um This is our website or you can visit us on facebook history and genealogy library. We have the instagram handle S. C. L. Underscore history and on this website or so. Um about 25 2019 to 2021. H. N. G. Newsletters. With all

kinds of information also on the Wallace collection. If you want to know more about the Wallace collection go to the august 2019 newsletter and read about it. Okay so um I see. We have a couple more minutes. Um Three more free online resources. I hope you

have some brain space left. Um, C. D N. C, California digital newspaper collection. The David Rumsey map collection in the city of santa rosa area viewer. The California digital newspaper collection works the same way as um, pretty much in the same way as newspapers dot com.

Um, these are the papers and whoops and you can see these are earlier papers, the newspapers, newspapers ofcom collection has for example, the press Democrat starting in 1923. Here are the earlier press Democrats 1875, the Sonoma Democrats, earlier papers going to go in. Mm hmm. You

can start searching here, get all the California um, stuff I want to go to browse by county and so no. And um, here you go. Press democrat. Just take our Mcdonald's address again. Works in the same way. Uh, put everything in quotes and here some information.

I'm not going to go into this because it's the same way you can filter, you can pick a decade. Um, one neat thing about this database is that you can separate out between articles and advertisements. You can't do this in the president. You can't do this

in newspapers dot com. So if you don't want to read any advertisements, just click on the article and you're good. I saw something here. Oops. There was a cook. Wanted just kind of neat in this case. I'm interested in the advertisement and so in, wanted a

cook, apply 8 15 Mcdonald avenue. You can also clip and print or save these articles. Um click with your right mouse with your right mouse button and go to clip this article and there you go. And you can just print it out or save it to

your computer. The David Rumsey Historical map collection is a collection of a private citizen. David Rumsey, that's actually him sitting there who donated his vast map collection to Stanford University and Stanford University. Um I think it's probably at the library um created this David Rumsey historical

map room. So you can, if you don't want to use the digitized versions, even go there and browse and produce these maps. Um, Stanford also digitized. I think about 40, of all the maps. And we are interested primarily in the county atlases that I mentioned before.

The 1866 powers, 1877 Thompson in 1898 Reynolds and Procter. And there's one very neat feature that I would like to show you. Yeah, this is so vast that the best thing is to search for Sonoma County up here and go, I'm going to put this up

here and here's already the Bowers map. Going to open it in a minute. You can see the Thompson and the Reynolds and Proctor here too. It's hidden. Now let's go. Yeah. Okay, let's just go to the Bowers to see how it works. This is one of

the earliest county maps that show the whole county and you zoom in and whoever owned property in 18 66 is depicted here. Mr Ridgeway morrigan clock and company. Handley one neat feature with David Ramsey is you can overlay maps on top of each other and you

can overlay with google maps. So go to view and geo references. Here's your map. Here's google Now, this is always annoying. Okay, zoom in. Where's santa rosa? Here we go. And let's say you don't really know where you are or where the property is. Um, put

a slider to the left and here's Google maps. So let's say, you know exactly where it is today on West 9th or take something more West lions. Okay, it's here somewhere and then you go to the right and you know that this property was probably either

owned by clark or culture or morgen and you can, you can even see the streets here. Okay, you can overlay all maps over each other. So the Reynolds and proctor, the bowers and the Thompson atlas and google maps. You really have this whole layer of maps

through the ages and you can exactly pinpoint where your property is Next and last one is the city of Santa Rosa aerial viewer. Um, this is very hidden. It's a very well kept secret. Um, you can either use this link through the santa rosa. City of

santa rosa website or you can go through here. What you can also do is City of santa rosa area viewer. We'll bring it up as well, so I'm going to click on Mhm here um you can go in and I'm going to search for a specific

address. You can't see anything. Sorry, it's very, don't worry, results are found here. Here's an address um click on it. This might look familiar, I'm just so out a little, it's the flamingo hotel. This is a lot of stuff here and I want to get rid

of it. Change visible map layers. Just click off parcel address. Just don't click off the city areas because that's it and just a minute I have to change my suit. Okay, Alright city um flamingo Hotel in 2020 and you can slide back in time with the

slider. This is a huge amount of data so it might take a while on slower computers. I'm 90 87 now and you can see how everything has already changed more green, not as many buildings going back changes even more And whoops. Okay, 1953 no flamingo hotel.

It was built in 1957 And let's just look at Sandra Rosa in 1953, a lot of trees and um you can also zoom into individual houses and yeah, it takes takes out. There we go. Okay, this is this area viewer covers all of Sonoma County. If

you're interested in other areas, click on city aerials and counting and county is everything except santa rosa. So if you're looking for petaluma aerials, click on, you have to click on county And um see if you get a broader view. The county aerials even go back

and you can see it here to 1942. Um city area of Santa Rosa. City areas are 1953. It's just back here. I know it's something. Mhm. Just go back to 1943, and here we go. No auxiliary airport. Okay, okay, that's it from me. Um I hope

it was not too much. No, it's so I know it's a lot of information um if you have any questions um please go ahead. Thank you. Simone really appreciate a lot of that information right there. We're gonna keep that on your shared screen for now and

then I'll cue you when to stop the shared screen so that we can bring on information about next month's presentation. Uh We do have questions and um thank you to everybody who wrote in some questions already, please if you haven't already. And you have a question

that you would like Simone to field, go ahead and key in your questions into our chat room and um we also have the great fortune this evening to have Historical Society of Santa rosa, board member and previous webinar presenter Denise Hill standing by to answer questions

during Q and A. As well. So that is very exciting. She has used many of these resources so much that she is our resident expert and has some answers as well. So one of the questions that we had already posted this evening is um from from

Catherine. And she said that as far as she knows her great grandfather, James green were W. E. I. R. Built the church um which is built from one red wood tree. And so she's interested in finding out if there is a record of who the contractor

or the builder was so that she may be able sounds like to verify that information about her great grandfather. Where where would you point her for a resource? I think I would say um come by or we know I know we have material on the church

of one tree. I actually just recently had a research request request where someone asked for um the connection between Joel crane who was a cinema county santa rosa pioneer and the church of one tree. Um So I know that there are this print material and were

might be named in it. So I would um I think what I would try first is the local history index. Um the digital collections um on the other screen try the local history index with the name were and common his first name and see what comes

up there. And it might already it might already be that his name is index and you know exactly which publication he's in. So we can go and pull it from the shelf. If not we can help you find material on him. I'm pretty sure we have

the church of one tree covered. Pretty well. I would say the church of one tree has probably got a lot of information on it for something where you're looking for people that actually were involved with building it. I guess if I was gonna start out aside

from going to the History genealogy Library, which is a great resource. Um if you're doing it from home, I would look at the newspaper collections that are digitized because if you can get back to it, if you can find out when it was built, go back

about a year and just follow the process through the the year before and the newspapers. And it'll probably start mentioning who's involved with building it. That's great. That's great information I also want with that. Um, because this all of this information is just, it's so rich

and these resources. Um great links by the way. Thanks for walking us through the website and whatnot. But it can be a little overwhelming when you're not familiar with the information. So I really want to make sure that folks know how to get ahold of the

history and genealogy library. And you do give us that email address which was history at Sonoma Library dot org. So that's a great way to communicate. And then you had also said, um you have the phone number which I did put into the chat area which

is 7073083212. And you mentioned when you mentioned that phone number that they could actually call in a larger swath of our than when you're open. So that the hours they could call in, I believe you mentioned was 10 to 5 monday through friday. That's correct. Yeah.

We are our staff is in the building. We are we are there five days a week and we are available for phone calls from 10 to 5. That's great. That's great. Especially with your limited hours, I did put those limited hours in the chat as well

and those limited hours for in person. Um you know, coming in for the public monday and Tuesday 123 and Wednesday thursday and friday from 11 AM till one PM. That's quite restricted. But of course we're in covid 19. We need to mention that out loud because

this is being recorded. It is gonna be on our youtube site and with the covid 19 restrictions, it has been somewhat limited. And you mentioned, you know, that's probably gonna open up a little bit more but we just have to continue to be patient at this

point. Yeah, it will change. I cannot say when or soon. I cannot say that but it will definitely change from these two hours we can bet on change we're gonna hope on change on the good side. And and increased hours and I hope it won't change

back. I don't like Exactly, exactly. So I really appreciate all of the information. You've done such a wonderful job. And another question here. Bye bye. Yvonne asking are there permit records for the city of Sonoma or Sonoma Valley? Um, and where would you direct her for

those permit records? So permit records? Um, it depends. Um, Sonoma, I think, I don't know. Um, what kind of permits are you looking for? What is the, what do you want to try to find out? What is it you're looking for? I think this would be

my first question because you might not need the permits. It might be, it might be somewhere else. If I know what, uh, what you're looking for, what does it have to be a permit? Great. Yeah. Well hopefully Yvonne is still with us and may be able

to key in that information in the chat. We are fielding other questions as well. So, um, I will go to those other questions and then see if, if she's given us some more information about those permits that she's looking for. Um, and we're getting in, uh,

some, some praise folks, folks like myself are taking copious notes while your presentation is happening and they're really appreciating all of the information. Um, and, and with that just to add, let's say that they missed something again. We, we just gave out that email address, we

gave out the phone number, it's in the chat room as well, but if they were to come in during those hours that you're open, they could get that one on one assistance right then correct? Absolutely. Yeah. We provide one on one assistance. We also provide one

on one assistance on the phone. So whoever you're getting during that time will um work with your question and your request as um almost the same as if you're coming in. If you're coming in, we can do more, we can, because we can ask you back

or we can ask like I asked yvonne, what exactly are you looking for? Are really looking for permits or maybe something else. So please come in. Um it's always better to come in but also feel free to call us. Um I wanted to say one more

thing. Um if you're for folks who were getting confused about all this information. I um I offered to when this video comes on youtube to um note, write down time stamps. So if you're watching this video, you want to watch the video again, but you don't

want to watch the whole thing again, let's say you're just interested in the Sonoma County Digital Collections and you will find these um that spot or that section with the timestamp, which should be kind of 21 45 or something. So you can just go to the

timestamp and I'm very happy to do that. So you can just go to that individual section or maybe you forgot the path or how to get there. Um I know it can be confusing so if you want to watch the video again just follow the timestamp

and there you have the the past at least. That is so gracious of you to be doing that and I want to let people know that it does take a little while to upload this video onto youtube. We usually have it uploaded by tomorrow morning. Uh

And of course those timestamps are probably gonna take a little extra time as well so don't expect that to be momentarily after this presentation is done. Um But thank you Simone for for doing that. Yeah and here's a question from Larry, what about properties that are

not necessarily historic? Maybe just of interest like early Montgomery village, is that information also available? Um Yes, absolutely. So um it's very interesting that you can find especially on newspapers dot com a lot when you type in your address as a search term, what comes up.

It's it's really um in earlier times everything was in the newspapers. They had to fill the newspapers and they filled it and they filled it with all kinds of stuff that is amazing and you can put in your address, you can put in if you know

any previous owners or renters which you can find out through the city directories for example because in these times um people were just more informed on people going to san Francisco and coming back or people buying puppies or cars. I mean this might sound like random

information but there is, there are a lot of nuggets in there and as I say in the beginning, also with newer construction, maybe not if your house was built in 2013, but sixties fifties and even seventies and eighties. We we get a request for that and

we find we find things that's great, you're the finder, the finder of things. So a little follow up information from Catherine who earlier was asking about the Church of One Tree. Um and her great, great grandfather, she recognized the name, I think Denise mentioned, Joel Crane

is her husband's relative and um she has an article from the press democrat about him hauling the Church of one tree so that it could be moved. I remember that's part of the story, correct. Um so I'm kind of filling in a little bit of her

of her information that she put in the chat, but so much fun here on these presentations. The information and the wealth of information that our presenters are giving, but also what our community and our attendees have as information from their families from their heritage. So thank

you everybody for sharing this information from Maggie. We have a thank you for the presentation itself. She's been listening while cooking dinner. I love that she's giving us that I want to know what's for dinner now. Um but she could not follow all of the details

are watch exactly where the database websites are. So she's asking about where she lives in Santa Rosa, which is in the West End Historic Neighborhood District, which is on West 8th Street. And where would you recommend to start looking up what year? Who built my house?

That is always a big question in our historical districts. What year was your house built? Right. And who built it according to the real estate agents when we bought the house? Uh it was built in 1900. Oh those real estate agents sometimes exaggerate. I have to

say I've been in that situation myself, but I would like to confirm that. So great for her to be digging a little bit deeper. How would you get her there? I would say go to the blue field survey because it's in a historic district you're going

to have potentially and most probably a whole sheet on just your house with a photo of when they did the Cultural Heritage survey. Uh If you go to the historical Society's website which will be on the last slide here, you'll be able to see the under

resources and research that we actually have scanned that survey. So you can see it digitally and it's scanned by neighborhood. So you can go in there and flip through, it's just like flipping through a multi page pdf and I imagine you're probably gonna find your house

because it definitely would have been surveyed if it was built in 1919 10 1925. Anything before in 1940 it would have been on the survey and I'm pretty good. But that's true of the west end Historic neighbourhood. So that information, yes, the website will be spelled

out on that last screen. So Yvonne is back and she wanted to answer your question about is it really a permit? And she's looking for? It was on the permits and tax assessment database. Um what she's looking for was and she was curious, her house is

a Sebastian Sebastian Johnny Bungalow built in 1920. Okay. I think I have to get back to this question. I'm not familiar with um Sino permits from Sonoma. Um so I think I don't really know before I spread any misinformation if Iran wants to write to us

exactly and to history at Sonoma Library dot org, I'm very happy to dig a little bit deeper and see what I can find. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Use that email address Yvonne history at Sonoma Library dot org. And um you can mention this presentation, you can

mention that you, you know, converse with simone and they'll get you some more information. Just be able to dig a little bit deeper. Um And Larry. I love larry's question here, is there a way to investigate some of the really colorful things uh that's happened in

our community like when Hugh coddling tried to get the permit to have an elephant as a pet in his house on Alameda. That would probably be in the newspapers I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah newspapers dot com or you actually had the California one. Right. That

might have been California one would probably be a little too early for conning. I would try the press democrat on newspapers dot com. Great, great. Um, one more thing to Yvonne. Um, we do have a historical resource survey I think even at your house is 19

twenties ish. If it's um a uh, of importance, they say it's probably in the Sonoma Historical Resource survey. So we could check if it's in there. This wouldn't be really permit related. But you would get as Denise said a sheet with a photo of the house

and more information on it and we are happy to look into it. So if you want to shoot us an email with the address, um, we can do that. Um, this is also online and I can later forward you that link um, the, this historical resources.

So no cinema historical resource survey is also online. It's a little bit difficult to navigate though. But um, this is for any everyone, anyone who's interested in those just browse or search for Sonoma Valley Historical Resources. It should come up and it's a database that you

can access. So you're saying that that's not on that link that you kept using on the library site that's actually they know I think I was using since it's Sonoma. I was just doing the central information. Got it, got it. And um when you when you're

checking on a house um do you have to have the exact address or could you just you were using the address a lot and you reminded us to always use the quotations around the address. Can we do that with just a name? Um owner's name of

a house instead of having the exact address? Oh absolutely. That's what I did with in newspapers dot com with C. A. Right? So any any owner's name you have put them in quotes. Try them on C. D. N. C. And newspapers dot com. Try them in

ancestry because as you saw there's a lot of information and who would have known that was the mother in law. So um and just try these two databases and you'll find you will find a lot. Yeah. And depending on how how long your street is. You

know I I many times just gone in there and put the street name in to see if I can stumble across something that I don't have an address but I have the street name and you have to go through more results but you may come across

what you're looking for. Right. This is also true for the photo collection. So if um I mean the 19 hundreds we didn't have selfies or anything. No one took photos like we do today. So they are probably if you have a house, that house might not

be on a photo. However if you put in your, just the street address it might show up. It might not have been indexed, which means if it's 8 22 Monroe. Um It might the Monroe that is indexed. Um But it might not show a 22 but

it might be the neighbor house and your house is on it too. You know, or it might be um that Monroe street is indexed with someone important in front of the neighbor's house and there's your house and you just see it as well. So try the

street name to. Yeah, definitely. That's great. Yeah. So be a sleuth. You've gotta yeah get those little cookie crumbs and just try everything. Don't don't stop at just one variable. It sounds like yeah, that's great. Great. You know, and a lot of times I think that's

maybe, you know, some of the stumbling block is that we we see one way to do it. So we just think of that one way. But you're saying, you know really it's got to have a wider net so just go ahead and use any little morsel

of information that you have to see if you can find it and and keep your scope a little bit larger in order to get to those fine details. That's correct. Yes, definitely. And write everything down that you find and where you find it because you'll never

find it again. Oh, this sounds like like from experience. Um Unfortunately whatever you do document it printed out the moment you find it or write it right down where you found it. Otherwise you go through this whole row of city directories again because you don't remember

which year it was. So that's just the tip and it's a good tip. Yeah. And don't believe what real estate agents tell you. Um I remember when I bought my house, um it was sold to me as a craftsman. It is nothing like a craftsman. Um

they just try to sell you anything and victorian is like. Yeah. Right. So um also with, I think real estate agents were mentioned earlier by someone. So they also do very sorry. Sloppy research. If they do the research, I mean they're probably really nice real estate

agency to do great research. Um but often if you get the house, if you buy the house and it says 1921, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Um and do your research and don't take it as, this is the real deal here. Um

might not be maybe just not their forte. We'll just say that no and that's not what they're paid for. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So and yvonne did get back to us and she said that it isn't that yes it is in the survey, Sonoma League for

history, Historic Preservation. Yeah. She actually worked on that survey for the League here. So he's quite knowledgeable as well. I think that is, I think that's really winding up all of our questions right here. So if you'd like to um take your screen off, share and

then I will put mine on. Um, and I really loved also that you just gave us that information um about uh, you know, the history and genealogy library and just reminding people that there, um that that is a reference library and not a check out library.

So thank you for reminding us of that. And also that sometimes that there's materials there at the history and genealogy library that you can't check out, You can't take home with you, but there might be duplicate copies at a branch. So definitely ask that question or

look it up in the computer and and know that, you know, it's not necessarily just one copy at, at your branch. So that was really, really important because um, you know, that could, that can be frustrating for folks that don't know that information. So I really

appreciate you giving us the information about the history and genealogy library and like what it comes to is and what the hours and the phone number and the email address and all of that great information. You did such a wonderful job and Denise. Thank you for

standing by and and having more answers for us and um through all of your experience of looking up resources as well. So um this has been quite fun and I think people will use a lot of this information. I want to remind everybody that if you

were not able to get down a couple of the notes, if you didn't have the ability to to describe while listening because it is so much fun just to live and that this webinar has been recorded and will be on the Historical Society of Santa rosa's

Youtube page will get that loaded up and probably be up on the Youtube page tomorrow. You can find out all the information you want to know about the Historical Society of santa rosa at www. Historical society santa rosa dot and did I put com again it's

supposed to be dot org. It will bring you there. Um so Historical Society of santa rosa put that in your web browser, it will take you to it and you can find out information about membership. You can find out the information. What was that? The brower's

map. I believe you mentioned in the followers map. Bowers map. You can find newsletters, you can find out who the board members are which segues us right to our next webinar. So in october brian much the President, the Historical Society of Santa rosa is presenting a

retrospective of various archaeological efforts conducted right here in santa rosa. That presentation will be on thursday november 18th at starting at six p.m. So also on the Historical Society of santa rosa's web page. The information will be coming out shortly telling you how to sign up

for that free webinar and remember donations are always welcome to the historical Society. That's how we keep it going. So so make your donations and be grateful and thankful during the month of november that the Historical Society of santa rosa brings you all of these wonderful

resources. There will be a webinar both in november and december I believe. Right Denise do we have one then? I think we're probably taking december off but we do have one scheduled for january correct. Thank you for that information. Yes. So um and we're getting lots

of thanks on the chats. Thank you to all of our attendees for coming out this evening and we got to stay dry indoors for this webinar so we really appreciate you being here and for your friends and family that might have wanted to catch this on

facebook. We do apologize we weren't able to upload it simultaneously on facebook but we will get the recording on Youtube as well. So want to just last bit. Thank you once again to Simone crime cow and Denise Hill for being here for being at this presentation

and giving us all of this wonderful information last chance to get that email address, which is history at Sonoma Library dot org. And that is how you can ask some more questions of Simone and you can reference this presentation. So with no further ado, we're gonna

let y'all go this evening. Simone. You are actually in control of closing out our webinar. I'm just gonna say goodnight, everybody, stay, stay safe, stay dry and do your research. Thanks all for coming out. Good night. Thank you.