An unusual color photograph of downtown Los Angeles in 1900. The view is looking south down Broadway, not far from where my great-grandparents lived at North Broadway and Bellevue Avenue. The tower visible at the top left is Old City Hall.… Read More


The 1850 U. S. Census was a disaster in California. It was disorganized and many of the records were lost, requiring California to mandate a state census in 1852 to try to gauge the massive increase in population due to the Gold Rush. Among those Gold Rush newcomers was my great-great-grandfather Seth Dunham (4 May… Read More


Sonoratown along Buena Vista (North Broadway) From Fort Moore Hill

The city of Los Angeles, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, was founded on September 4, 1781 by a multi-racial group of settlers from Mission San Gabriel. The city continued to grow slowly; its leaders generally Californios of the landed classes who had received vast tracts of land, the ranchos, by grants from… Read More


The first church in Berg, the ancestral village of the Stoltz family in the Pfalz region of today’s Germany, was built in 1608. It was quite small, most likely a chapel. It had room for only about 65 people. Over the years the village continued to grow. In 1733 Berg became a parish, with its… Read More


My great-uncle Carlos Ysidro Alvarado was born 15 May 1897 in Ensenada, Baja California. He was baptized 27 Oct 1897 in the Iglesia Todos Santos (Church of All Saints) in Ensenada. He was the second child of José María and Jesús Alvarado. Two years later the family moved to Los Angeles. The Alvarado family landed… Read More


Yesterday on NPR I heard a review of a new book on the history of Los Angeles. It sounded fascinating, so I immediately went to the Taschen store at the Farmers Market and bought it. Los Angeles: Portrait of a City, is a huge, 571-page book containing hundreds of photographs of the city’s history from… Read More


George Morton (1585-1624) and Nathaniel Morton (1613-1685) This past week my publisher delivered the files for my book to the printer.  I imagine that within the next couple of weeks I will have an actual copy of my first book in my hands. The book is Ascend: The Catholic Faith for a New Generation, published… Read More


When my great-great-great grandparents James Dunham (1788-?) and Betsy Gilpatrick (1795-1860) were married in 1814 in Orland, Hancock County, Maine, they created a link between my Dunham ancestors and the ancestors of John Hancock, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Governor Hancock is actually my second cousin. He is seven times removed because he and… Read More


On April 18, 1898 my great-grandaunt Trinidad “Trini” García married Victor Federico “Freddie” Goldbaum in Ensenada, Baja California. She was born about 1878 in Alamo, Sonora, the daughter of Francisco García (~1843-~1899) and Rosario Moraila (~1857-17 Nov 1924). He was born 20 October 1862 in San Francisco, the son of Louis Goldbaum (1832-1899), a Jewish… Read More


Perhaps it has become a bit trite to say that you can’t choose your family. As worthwhile and notable as the lives of many Dunhams have been through the past centuries, it is only to be expected that some will fall short of what we might hope to learn about our ancestors. Certainly it is… Read More