Photos from the 1967 Crabb Family Reunion in Cedar Rapids, IA (from Crabb Family P&M file)

Remember that box of old photos and newspaper clippings you found while cleaning out your parents’ garage? What, on Earth, did you do with it? If you’re of the archival mindset, you probably didn’t throw it out—but now it’s taking up valuable real estate in your own garage, somewhere between that box of old CDs and your college textbooks.

People experiencing this predicament have donated this type of material to the Los Angeles Public Library’s History & Genealogy Department.  Located at the Central Library in downtown LA, the genealogy collection is one of the largest on the West Coast and numbers more than 45,000 volumes, including over 10,000 family histories.  LAPL also has many city directories, local histories, database subscriptions, and unique indexes that are helpful for genealogical research. However, one of our most unusual and interesting sections is our little-known Pamphlet & Manuscript collection.

When patrons run across old family-related ephemera that they find difficult to store or that they want to make accessible to more people, they will often donate that material to us.  Items might include a brochure from a 50th wedding anniversary, a box of obituary clippings from the Daily News, a high school graduation photo, or a handwritten letter from the trenches of Ypres. 

Once we receive it, we go through the contents of the donation and identify a primary family surname related to the material.  We then put this surname identifier into an online index, so people can see that we have material related to the family, then put the physical items into a folder in a Closed Stacks filing cabinet. Our storage system is not high tech, but it keeps this unusual material organized, safe from theft (patrons viewing the materials must leave an I.D. at the Reference Desk in the History & Genealogy Department), and easy to access.

Items we accept must be related to a family, and the donation has to be of a “manageable” size, meaning it has to be able to fit into legal-size manila folders in a standard legal-size filing cabinet.  The material we consider should have genealogical value related to family research (e.g. birth, marriage, or death “proof”) or a family’s social history (e.g. personal items like a diary of letters that give context to the conditions of a person’s life). 

Excised sections from a family bible (from Borland Family P&M file)

A self-published mini-autobiography from a woman on her death bed (from Bellamy Family P&M file)

To give an idea of what might be in one of these folders, here is what I found in the “Boynton” family files:

• A typed letter (on onion skin paper) to the Los Angeles Public Library, dated January 20, 1966, from Charles L. Boynton of Alhambra, California, providing an overview of his research on the Boynton and Dozier families. 
• Six hand-written “Family Group” sheets related to the Boynton family.
• One hand-written pedigree chart with Joseph Boynton (1738-1820) as the subject.
• Six typed pages of biographical information, sources, and correspondence.
• Handwritten, transcribed pages from New Hampshire Genealogies, v. 2, pg. 747, describing male descendancy from Bartholomew de Boynton (1050 - c.1077).
• A 15-page, self-published travel memoir of a trip to China by Charles L. and Leila Dozier Boynton.

Pedigree chart found within the Boynton Family Pamphlet & Manuscript folder.

To figure out if there is anything in the Genealogy Collection that might relate to your family, go to our online Genealogy and Local History Index. In the example above, searching for “Boynton” in the “family” field brings up 60 items in this bare-bones database—mostly pointers to books and journals that feature the Boynton family.  But item 25 in the list is a spare entry with “Pamphlet & Manuscript Collection” as its call number and only “Boynton family” as a description.  

Until we find an intern to update our online database to comprehensively describe each folder’s contents, a searcher cannot be entirely certain if this material is related to the Boynton family she is researching.  However, she can ask us to retrieve this folder for her and, if it does turn out to be about her Boyntons, she’s just struck genealogical gold. From novice genealogists to old pros, anyone can use this collection to discover otherwise unobtainable material to flesh out a family tree in a unique and interesting way--material that was previously hidden in an attic or garage and unavailable to research.

Copyright and time issues have prevented us from digitizing this quirky, fantastic collection, but hopefully that will happen in some capacity down the road. But, for now: check the online index, or come to the History & Genealogy Department and check our onsite card catalog (not everything has been recorded into the online index).  Then, if you are lucky enough to find a Pamphlets & Manuscript file featuring one of your ancestral surnames, ask our librarian to retrieve the folder for you. 

Your roots may be residing right here in the Los Angeles Public Library!

Some of the Items I've Found

Studio photo of Ira Bassett, Levi Dicey, and Tom Morrin (from Dicey Family P&M file)

A 1926 Minnesota marriage certificate between Josef Bruner and Vesta Phillips (from Bruner Family P&M file)

Family Sheet.jpg, A 1966 relationship map of the Alvarez Family (from Alvarez Family P&M file)

A hand-made family tree “fan” chart (from Jones Family P&M file)

Masonic Certificate.jpg, A masonry certificate of advancement for Thomas Orsborn in the Somerset Lodge, #34, of Norwich, CT (from Osborne Family P&M file)

A hand-drawn and colored dedication to early California families (from Alvarado Family P&M file)

Julie Huffman has been the genealogy librarian at the Central Library of Los Angeles Public Library for five years. Over the course of her fourteen years at LAPL, she has been a young adult, children’s, and adult reference librarian.  Her MLIS is from UCLA and she has a Bachelor’s of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.