Because the first children of my great-grandparents José María Alvarado and Jesús García de Alvarado were born in Ensenada, Baja California, and José María had indicated on his petition for naturalization that he emigrated to Los Angeles in 1899, I had always assumed that they were married in Ensenada. In a comment to a previous… Read More


Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young. And while you’ve got to love having non-conformist ancestors, sometimes their adventures make it difficult to track them. Case in point: my grandmother María Lucia “Lucille” Alvarado Wood Dunham Minasian. She was quite a handful, especially once she met up with my grandfather Sumner Earl Dunham… Read More


As my great-grandparents José María and Jesús Alvarado would exit the front door of their modest residence at the corner of Bellevue Avenue and North Broadway in 1900 Los Angeles, two blocks to the northwest they would see this grand house, built in 1887, on a hill above them. This was the residence of Joseph… 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


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