GENEALOGY RESEARCH RESOURCES

In The Monterey Bay Area

The #1 "must know about" resource in the Monterey area is The Family History Center on Noche Buena between Kimball and Plumas in Seaside. Entrance is in the back of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is open and free to the public and no religious affiliation is necessary. Hours are Tues-Weds 9am-9pm, Fri 9am-5-pm, Sat 11am-3pm but call 394-1124 to verify before going there. Expert free assistance is available for learning about and doing genealogy research. Extensive library on-site with additional access to worldwide genealogy records on film, fiche, CD-ROM, and the Internet.

Associate with like-minded genealogy researchers in the Monterey County Genealogy Society. MoCoGenSo meets at 7pm on the First Thursday of the month except July at the Family History Center (above). For more information visit the web site at http://www.mocogenso.org. Expert assistance is available from members.

National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Region, 1000 Commodore Drive, San Bruno, California 94066-2350. All U.S. Census records are available as well as military service records for the Revolutionary War. For detailed information, hours, and directions visit the web site at http://www.nara.gov/regional/sanfranc.html or call 650-876-9001.

California State Library - Sutro, 480 Winston Drive, San Francisco, CA 94132. Hours Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. The Sutro Library has one of the largest genealogical collections west of Salt Lake City with extensive resources for states other than California and basic resources for California. For more details see http://www.onelibrary.com/Library/calslsut.htm or call (415) 731-4477.

The California State Library has its own online library catalog, but its holdings are also listed, along with those of the University of California libraries, on the MELVYL Union Catalog. The Web site of the California State Library, Sacramento, at http://www.library.ca.gov/ has links to both online catalogs. You can also go directly to MELVYL at telnet://melvyl.ucop.edu or http://www.melvyl.ucop.edu/ . Limit your search on MELVYL to holdings of both the Sacramento and Sutro branches of the California State Library by selecting Calif. State Libraries in the "Location box". You cannot limit the search to just one branch.

Other area libraries also have genealogical resources such as the California Room at the Monterey Public Library or local history at the Santa Cruz Public Library http://www.santacruzpl.org/

SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. It is the applicants responsibility to prepare an acceptable application. There are several excellent computer programs available to simplify this task. These programs make it much easier to prepare neat, correct applications and to edit them if changes are necessary. They also simplify adapting an application to a new ancestor for a supplementary application. For more information visit the National SAR website membership page.. Specific information about the various programs can be found there at Application Software Programs..

Prepared by Bob Stephan.