LibraryAware H&G September 2020 Newsletter

SONOMA COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY LIBRARY

NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2020

Volume 2 Issue 8

Coming Soon!

Sonoma County Library's Special Collections is pleased to announce

Sonoma Responds: A Community Memory Archive

We invite community members to document, share, and preserve

the record of living through these remarkable times. Your contributions will be the primary sources that future generations use to understand the age of social distancing.

Our community will be able to participate in the following ways:

- By social media using the hashtag #SonomaResponds

- By reflective prompts and file sharing. Upload your images, videos, recordings, writings which will be made available in our digital collections

- By nominating a link to online content for the web archive

- By nominating materials for the physical archive (when the library can safely accept these)

An English/Spanish online portal where you can submit your contributions

will launch in mid-September on the library's website.

Stay tuned!

Meet Local Historian and Author

Gaye LeBaron

Welcome, Gaye. I think it is safe to say that our readers are well acquainted with your long career and invaluable contribution to the history of Sonoma County – is there something someone might be surprised to know about you – as a person?

Well, I don’t think there is anything that would surprise anyone, my life is pretty much an open book! Maybe that my husband John LeBaron, a fourth generation Sonoma County resident, was as much interested and involved in its history as I am. But that’s it - all in all, I had a great husband who had a rewarding career in his own right, two wonderful children, and an adult grandson. No skeletons in my closet!

No skeletons, but so many voices echoing from the past - tell us all about them! You were born in Humboldt County, California. How did you get interested in Sonoma County history?

When I was 14 my parents bought a small hardware store in Boyes Hot Springs. My mother was a Portuguese immigrant from the Azores and my stepfather’s ancestors, Humboldt County pioneers, owned Shelter Cove. I went to high school in Sonoma, the heart of Sonoma County history. Then there was my husband, whose paternal great grandfather was Justice of the Peace in Bodega, and Harvey Hansen, who taught California history at the SRJC. Harvey had been collecting information from early on, to write a book on Sonoma County history, and in 1962, when I had been married for four years and just had a baby, he came to me with all his notes and papers in a box and said: “I can’t write it, I tried, but I’m not a writer.” So I wrote Wild Oats in Eden and got credited for being the editor, which was all I wanted. We later dedicated Santa Rosa. A 19th Century Town to Harvey, “who exhorted us to ‘Keep the history.’”

With a career spanning 60+ years, do you think the perception of local history has changed over time, and how?

“All history is local,” says Joseph Amato, and the perception of history has dramatically changed. In fact, the way we regard the past has taken sharp turns with the need to accommodate current issues, while, at the same time, we can't hold people responsible for things they could not possibly have known. But there is definitely more interest in the past today than when I started! In the early 1960s only a tiny kernel of people were involved in historical societies – with the exception of a consistently active Sonoma Valley Historical Society - until the 1976 Bicentennial brought about an outburst of interest. Now we have contributors like Jeff Elliott in Santa Rosa, John Sheehy in Petaluma, environmental historian Arthur Dawson and many others, which is a source of great gratification to me. I am still writing, because I love it, but I feel I don’t need to, I don’t feel the urgency anymore.

You are a regular patron of the H&G Library. What was your most interesting find here or at the Sonoma County Archives?

I cannot even begin to quantify what the library has done for me over the years – starting with the Carnegie stone building with its creaky floors, the small temporary library upstairs on Hinton Ave, the former Sonoma County Room on the upper floor of the Central Library whose collection was started by Audrey Herman, and the Annex. But the Sonoma County Archives have been my treasure. My first real venture into the Archives was when I started reading the transcript of the coroner’s inquest for the 1920 lynching of members of the San Francisco Howard Street gang in Santa Rosa. Did you know that the inquest for the people who did the lynching took only 45 minutes to find them not guilty? And that was it. Nobody talked about it and that set me up to find out what had really happened. I didn't get the whole picture until I interviewed Clarence "Barney" Barnard, the last survivor of the incident in 1989. The tape was sealed at the library until his passing in 2008, that’s what I had promised him. Now the interview is available online and part of the Gaye LeBaron collection at Sonoma State University Library.

Gaye LeBaron is a journalist, author, educator, and local historian. Since 1959, she has written more than 8,000 columns in her sixty years with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Her many other publications include a co-authored two-volume history of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, a 19th Century Town (1985) and Santa Rosa, a 20th Century Town (1993). Her latest book, The Wonder Seekers of Fountaingrove (2018, co-authored with Bart Casey), explores the history of Fountaingrove, Thomas Lake Harris and his Utopian brotherhood. Gaye taught Sonoma County history at the Santa Rosa Junior College (1975-2008) and at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Sonoma State University, and continues to write two Sunday columns focused on local history for the Press Democrat each month. She was married to photojournalist John A. LeBaron (1928-2014).

Find the Gaye LeBaron Historical Photograph Collection, 1871-1989 and material by and on Gaye LeBaron at the Sonoma County Library.

Interview: Simone Kremkau. Photo provided by Gaye LeBaron.

Expanded Digital Resources

During the pandemic, the Sonoma County Library and many leading digital content providers are working to offer you more choices for how to stay safe at home by offering library card holders extended remote access to their databases.

Ancestry.com

Usually only available within library branches, Ancestry Library Edition is now available for at-home use. Access to records from the U.S. Census, military records, court, land and probate records, and more. Remote access will be available until December 31, 2020 and will be re-evaluated monthly as needed.

Newspapers.com

Usually only available within library branches, now available for at-home use until library reopens. Access to digital archives of the Press Democrat 1923-1997, Petaluma Argus Courier 1899-2018, Santa Rosa Republican 1904-1948, Sonoma West Times and News 1895-2016, Cloverdale Reveille 1879-2004, and others.

San Francisco Chronicle

Sonoma Index-Tribune
Enjoy the San Francisco Chronicle (1985-present) and the Sonoma Index Tribune (1993-present). Available through December 31, 2020.

More Sonoma County Library expanded digital resources

Find a complete list of the library's historical research databases, including the Press Democrat (1994-present) and the San Francisco Chronicle 1865-1922, in this guide. Free with your library card. If you don't have one, sign up for an ecard and start your research from home!

Virtual Events in September

Where Women Made History

Exploring Sites Associated with Petaluma’s Suffrage Movement

Join local historian and author Katherine J. Rinehart on a visual tour of sites where suffragists gathered to work on the 1896 and 1911 political campaigns to secure voting rights for California women.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Free and open to all. Please register by September 7 to receive the ZOOM invitation and link to the meeting:

info@VillageNetworkofPetaluma.org

or 707-776-6055.

Photo: First Congregational Church, Petaluma, built in 1857

Are you looking for your English ancestors? This presentation is for you! Vernon's talk will cover searching parish records reaching back to the 1600s, civil and census records for the period after mid-1837, information on the major and smaller, specialized websites, and more.

Saturday, September 19, 2020

12 PM - 2 PM

Please register on the Sonoma County Genealogical Society’s website, to receive the ZOOM invitation and link to the meeting.

Virtual Exhibits

Join exhibit curator Paula Freund for a virtual, in-depth gallery tour of the exhibit "Petaluma's Participation in the Women's Suffrage Movement. A Commemoration of the Ratification of the 19th Amendment" at the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum. With newly discovered artifacts and documents from Petaluma’s past, the exhibit tells the inspiring story of a California community’s contribution to women winning the right to vote. Watch a recording of the Exhibit Dedication on YouTube, and check back for updates on additional exciting events and presentations in October. Visit the Petaluma Museum online for more information.

How to reach the Sonoma County Library's Special Collections

Do you have a reference question or do you need help with your research? Find out how to reach us while we prepare to safely reopen our buildings!

Email the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library at history@sonomalibrary.org. Call at (707) 308-3212, Tuesdays to Thursdays 10 AM - 5 PM.

Contact Connie Williams at the Petaluma History Room on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays 10 AM - 3 PM, by phone at (707) 763-9801 x0722, and by email at cwilliams@sonomalibrary.org. Visit the PHR blog sonomalibrary.org/blogs/petaluma-history.

The Sonoma County Wine Library is offering curbside pick-up for most of their books and DVDs. Place a request on materials in the catalog and pick them up at your nearest library branch. For wine research questions, book recommendations, or for more information on accessing Wine Library materials please email Megan Jones at mjones@sonomalibrary.org or call (707) 433-3772 x0416.

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Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library

Mailing Address: 211 E Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Physical Address: 725 3rd Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404

Phone: (707) 308-3212

Read about us in the Press Democrat

Email the editor: skremkau@sonomalibrary.org

Sonoma County Library
707-545-0831www.sonomalibrary.org