Category Archives: Uncategorized

1850-1862

(have only begun this document)

1852 to 1896

Information on microfilm is on file at the County Recorders Office, located in Oroville and at the Meriam Libray, California State University, Chico. Both were examined and the following information was discovered. 

SOME  ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY  

Steadman, Agnes, and Jean Minasian (co-editors)

1976 Oroville: Legacy of a Gold Town.  Friends of the Parks of Oroville, Oroville.

According to Hsu (2000:29-30,32) it is difficult to find accurate figures for nineteenth-century Chinese migration to the United States.  As restrictions increased many  Chinese miners and laborers entered the country illegally and avoided contact with official agencies.  As a result federal records, 

This listing was a copy of a hand written/transcribed ledger whose provenance remains unclear. It’s day book title is puzzling as well.

INDEX FOR YEARS OF 1874-1916

The index shown here is massively incomplete, prepared sometime after the original paperwork had been filed and then (over time) disappeared. The actual files were not found when we looked for them on microfilm. We have not checked if the original documents survived.

This information was taken from microfilm on file at the Meriam Library, California State University Chico.  It is obvious that much of the original listing has not survived time,  especially considering the long span of years covered by this index.

Some of the information was hard to decipher.  A question mark (?) has been placed if the information was unclear.

CHINESE 

1893-1901

This information was taken from an index of a register of deaths ledger on file at Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.  Some of the names were hard to read, they were listed here as they appeared to me.  Place of death is listed within the parentheses.  The “suburbs of Oroville” could be the Oroville Chinatown or other parts of the towns or populated places around the Feather River drainage. By the time of the 1900 census the area enumeration districts and Chinese population had expanded beyond the 1860 census boundaries. The 1910 census was taken after the flooding 

Feather River (March 1907) destroyed the area around Broderick and Safford Street.

Download the word doc – 9th CENSUS 1870 – Oroville Chinese

9^th CENSUS 1870

BUTTE COUNTY

OPHIR TOWNSHIP, OROVILLE

This information was extracted from a microfilm copy of the 1870 9^th census located at the Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.  Some of the names and occupations in this listing were difficult to interpret. A question mark has been placed where the information is unclear.

The National Archives Records Administration reference service reported to us that no census maps were created for California districts for the 9^th census.  As a result, we are still looking for other map resources to explain the enumerator’s route and the geographic location of the numbered dwellings mentioned in this census.

Continue reading →

Chinese Communities of Oroville: A Brief Sketch

AND DEATH CERTIFICATES

1890-1916

This information was taken from the certificates themselves that had been in a box stored at Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico by an arrangement with the offices of the County of Butte and the Association for Northern California Records and Research (ANCRR-see Lois McDonald’s white paper). The certificates were sent back to the county in 2002. We do not know where they are currently housed and under what conditions.We have lists of burials from 1890 to 1904.  The Chinese practice of removing the remains of the dead for burial in their homeland required a permit. We do not have a good contemporary source for that process from Oroville. There is a good source from a Chico (town  20 miles east and north of Oroville) newspaper however. More