Sea Genes

Portland in Three Centuries, by Carl Abbott is a modern local history focused on the Oregon city named after that other one somewhere else. Mr. Abbott begins with the basic facts of Portland’s discovery and quickly moves on to development of it’s neighborhoods. He also shows their emergence into what is now the city itself. The focus here is on the people who made the neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods work together.

This history is well illustrated with key features of the neighborhoods. Some of the photographs are from the author’s collection, and some are from the Wikimedia Commons. One comment by the author that I particularly like is that visitors “marvel at Powell’s Bookstore;” all of it’s suburban branches included. Another interesting illustration is that of the Portlandia statue which is comparable to that other copper-clad goddess.

The resources section at the end of the history includes more information for readers interested in Portland’s history, including several blogs and websites. A number of academic theses and dissertations are referenced as this history’s core sources. They may well be good reading for those inclined toward the sort of history that is not widely used by researchers. Another resource mentioned is the censuses taken over the years. These social statistics show distribution of each neighborhood’s population in relation to the whole city.

Carl Abbott. Portland in Three Centuries. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. 2011.

Image via Wikipedia

In March 1899, the United States Congress authorized the Secretary of War to recruit and enlist up to 35,000 volunteers to go to the Philippine Islands to put down an uprising. More than 125,000 soldiers from California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming were involved, and over 4,000 of them died in the conflict. Two battalions of Philippine scouts and a squadron of Philippine cavalry were also involved. Soldiers from the Regular Army also served.

The National Archives and Records Administration has an alphabetical card index to Philippine Insurrection volunteer soldiers’ compiled service records. The index entries give information about the soldier’s name, rank, and unit, or units he served with. The service records referred to by the index are organized by regiment and then by soldier’s name. Details about Regular Army soldiers who served in the Philippine Insurrection will be included in other records.

The records this index refers the user to include a jacket-envelope for each soldier, labeled with his name, containing

• card abstracts of entries relating to the soldier as found primarily in original muster rolls and returns, but occasionally in other records such as pay vouchers, and
• the originals of any papers relating solely to the particular soldier.

A separate group of personal papers follows the compiled service records. These may include personal papers referred to in the index. These papers were accumulated by the War Department to be filed with the regular series of compiled service records. The papers were not inter-filed for one reason or another. There are no compiled service records for soldiers whose index cards contain cross-references to the miscellaneous personal papers.

Pension application files may be available from the Veterans Administration.

Finding Names in the Index

The best thing to know about finding a soldier in this record group is to know the unit or units he served with. A volunteer soldier who served during the Philippine Insurrection may not be listed in the index because he

• may have been in Regular Army unit
• may have used a different name, alias, a different spelling
• proper service records may not have been made
• his service record may have been lost or destroyed
• there may be only vague references to the soldier in the original records

Knowing any nicknames or other variations of the soldier’s name helps. Knowing the Soundex code variations on the name may also improve search results. Good sources of name variations include personal papers, other military records, newspaper accounts of the conflict, and local histories.

—

NARA has fact-sheets about these records

• M872 – Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served during the Philippine Insurrection. 24 rolls.
• T288 – General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934. 544 rolls.

A microfilm copy of these indexes is located at NARA’s Pacific Alaska Region Seattle facility.

Image via Wikipedia

Between 1859 and 1956 the U. S. government kept records of declarations of intention and petitions for naturalization in Oregon Territory and State. These records can contain genealogically significant information. The records are organized by surname and declaration date and petition date. These records are arranged chronologically and grouped by type of entry, as listed above. Some records in this group may not exist due to destruction or they may simply be missing. Additionally, the earlier records may not be indexed at all.

Microfilm copies of these records are kept at the NARA Pacific Alaska Region facility in Seattle, Washington.

The National Archives and Records Administration has fact sheets about these publications:

• M1242 — Indexes to Naturalization Records of the U. S. Circuit and District Courts for the District of Oregon, 1859–1956
• M1540 — Naturalization Records for U. S. District Courts for the State of Oregon, 1859–1941

Image via Wikipedia

Between 1851 and 1908 the U. S. government kept records of all federal land transactions in Oregon. These records can contain genealogically significant information.

The records include land transactions under various laws and acts, including: donation land, homesteads, timber and stone, timber culture, desert land, mining, and some cash sales. The records also include tract books (township, range, section, and fraction of section) with lists of owners.

There are records of homestead entries and final certificates, desert land declarations and entries, timber culture entries, abstracts of land sold, and patents delivered. In addition, some Oregon land records include abstracts of military land warrant certificates and soldier declaratory statements.

The records here do not include the land entry case files. Those records are available from the National Archives, in Washington, D. C. Record copies of donation land patents issued are kept by the Bureau of Land Management, and are not included here.

Oregon’s Federal Land Offices were located in various places over the years, including: Burns, Harney, La Grande, Lakeview, Linkville (Klamath Falls), Oregon City, Portland, Roseburg, The Dalles, Vale, and Winchester.

Some information on this page was summarized from NARA publications:

• M145 — Abstracts of Oregon Donation Land Claims, 1852–1903
• M815 — Oregon and Washington Donation Land Files, 1851–1903
• M1621 — Federal Land Records for Oregon, 1854–1908

Copies of these records are kept at the National Archives and Records Administration’s Pacific Alaska Region facility in Seattle, Washington, where I am a professional genealogy researcher. Contact me to start a discussion about the possibilities of researching your family’s history. Likewise, if you would like more information about my genealogical research services, including information about fees, and range of materials available to research, I’d love to hear from you.

This is an updated item from my previous Sea Genes website. While that site is gone, the materials on it are still relevant. Biographical Sketch of Charles C. Maling (1836-1902). He was early central Oregon pioneer with an interesting story. There is also some research available on the Green Gold history site.