Doug 周

Another cross post from Trish Hackett Nicola, who wrote:

There is an article from the New Yorker online. 28 Jan 2022 on legers with photos and biographical information of Chinese living in Downieville, CA about 1890-1930.

“The Dark Purpose Behind a Town Constable’s Journal” by Michael Luo ^{The Article link}

This is a cross post from Grant Din’s forum chineseamericanfamilyhistory ^link that might be of interest to members of BACGG

Grant Wrote:

Hello genealogists-
As you all know, I’m on the board of the California Genealogical Society, and this year we’re the host society for the annual National Genealogical Society conference May 24-28. This is the first time it’ll be on the West Coast in some time, and (as long as it’s safe) it’ll be held in Sacramento, where I know many of us have relatives! Please take a look at the attached conference brochure –  you’ll note that Gordon H. Chang will give the keynote remarks on Wednesday morning, Larissa Lam and Baldwin Chiu’s Far East Deep South will be screened on Friday; and among the tracks are immigration, DNA, Chinese American, Asian Pacific, Western States, and many other great areas. Our own Marisa Louie Lee, Trish Hackett Nicola, Linda Harms Okazaki, Carly Lane Morgan, Cindy Kim Thomson, and yours truly are all among the presenters. There are tours on Tuesday the 24th including a gold country tour I’ve been drafted to lead!

There will be both in-person and and online ways to attend the conference, and you can get the full schedule by looking at the attached brochure. To register or for more information, visit the NGS conference site. We’re also looking for volunteers to help in many ways. I’m happy to answer questions at grant@tonaidin.net.

To prepare, CGS also has a six-part series on libraries and repositories in Sacramento and the Bay Area. Scroll down to see more information about all of our upcoming programs including the libraries ones. The first of the series was a program on the Center for Sacramento History and we have a video online here and we’ll have the two that we had about the California State Library online soon. I’ll be sure to let people know about how to see them because they have a lot of good information.

You’ll also note below that Raymond Douglas Chong will be giving a free online talk about his Chinese railroad worker ancestor on March 8. Be sure to check it out!
Grant

National Genealogical Society 2022 Family History Conference ^{on the CGS site}

The National Genealogical Society conference brochure provides a detailed information of the location, conference topics, events and more. Download it now and start planning your visit.

Marisa Louie Lee shared this post on Grant Din’s forum chineseamericanfamilyhistory ^link that might be useful to members of BACGG. Here is her repost:

Hi all,
For those of you interested in Chinese Canadian immigration, Grant asked me to share about the Registers of Chinese Immigration to Canada, 1885–1949. These are held by Library Archives Canada and document “all immigrants of Chinese origin arriving in Canada between 1885 and 1949.”
You may have heard that these are being newly indexed on FamilySearch, but they were previously indexed as part of a project from the University of British Columbia, and the index is hosted at Library Archives Canada. 
The index data is also available as a spreadsheet, which has the amazing addition of analysis and “mapping” of the place of birth fields in the register. What resulted is being able to search the spreadsheet by a village name in Chinese characters for two of the counties in Guangdong Province, the place of origin for many pre-WWII Chinese immigrants. 
As an example, I searched my great-grandfather’s village and found a handful of immigrants to Canada who also came from his village. Interestingly, their 雷 surname was primarily Romanized as LOY rather than my LOUIE.
Have you found any of your Chinese Canadian relatives or ancestors in the registers? Feel free to share!
Marisa