[Spock in ASCII] RAPA #1 Cover from Star Trek Association of Irvine Publications, University of California, Irvine. PS-007, Box 1

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 college text books.

People experiencing just this predicament have donated such material to the Los Angeles Public Library’s History & Genealogy Department.  Items that might include a brochure from a 50th-wedding anniversary, an obituary clipped from the Daily News, a high school graduation photo, or a hand-written letter from the trenches of Ypres are organized within a very special collection we have here at Central Library: the “Pamphlet & Manuscript” collection.  

Items we accept must be related to a family, and the donation has to be of a “manageable” size (our file cabinets are probably not as large as your garage, so we won’t be able to take that 1940s Red Rocket Sled you’ve been trying to unload!).  

We go through the contents of the donation and identify a primary family surname related to the material.  We assign it that surname, put details in an online index so people can find it, and put the items into a folder in a Closed Stacks filing cabinet where it will remain preserved and available for anyone to research.

As an example, I pulled out a folder for the “Boynton” family, and here’s what I found:

1. 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.
2. Six hand-written “Family Group” sheets related to the Boynton family
3. One hand-written pedigree chart with Joseph Boynton (1738-1820) as the subject
4. Six typed pages of biographical information, sources, and correspondence
5. Handwritten, transcribed pages from New Hampshire Genealogies, v. 2, pg. 747, describing male descendancy from Bartholomew de de Boynton (1050 - c.1077)
6. A 15-page, self-published travel memoir to China by Charles L. and Leila Dozier Boynton

Pedigree chart found within the Boynton Family Pamphlet & Manuscript folder

The way to figure out if we have anything in this collection that might relate to your family, is to go to our online Genealogy and Local History Index. For the above example, type the word “Boynton” in the “family” blank and hit ENTER. You’ll see 60 items come up in this bare-bones database—mostly pointers to books and journals that feature the Boynton family.  But item 25 in the list is a cryptic, 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, you’ll not be entirely sure if this material is related your Boyntons. However, ask us to retrieve this folder for you and, if does turn out to be about your Boyntons, you’ve just struck genealogical gold.

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 for your surnames; come to LAPL’s History & Genealogy Department and check our in-person, card-catalog index for your surnames (not everything has been recorded into the online index); then, if you are lucky enough to find a P&M 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 “garage” of the Los Angeles Public Library!

Some of the items I’ve found:

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. The Genealogy and Local History Collection at Central Library is one of the largest on the west coast, numbering more than 45,000 volumes, including over 10,000 family histories.  LAPL also has many city directories, local histories, database subscriptions, and unique indexes.