At my recent writing retreat in Wyoming, someone shared this YouTube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dCx2XCw8tU

4,094 ancestors

Thought it was a fun share and made me again realize that my struggles are not new.  Those 4,094 that came before me also had struggles.  It’s the struggles that make the story.

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When I was a child, there was a Toys R Us catalog that came out before Christmas every year.  This was pre-Excel, but if I had known what spreadsheets were, I would have spreadsheeted the heck out of that catalog.  Wish lists continue to be my thing.  I actually have an entire journal that I just use for wish lists.

Now it’s your turn.  We need to know what books you want in our new CGS Library.  We’ve been given a gift of $600 and the Library Committee’s wish list needs to be bulked up!

What do you want to see in the library?  Is there a genealogy book on YOUR wish list that you think would benefit others?

Put together your top five and comment here or send to cpattillo@californiaancestors.org.

Here is mine:

1. Your Stripped Bare Guide to Citing & Using History Sources by Elizabeth Shown Mills
2. Who Do Your Think You Are? By Megan Smolenyak
3. 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late by Shannon Alder
4. Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry
5. The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy by Blaine T. Bettinger

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During our drive to Wyoming, we got to stop at all these great places for my husband (a photographer) to take pictures.  My one ask was to take a picture of the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, UT.  Not only did I get to do that, but I got to visit each of the 5 floors so that when I go one day for weeks at a time, I know what to expect.

The first floor we visited, I grabbed 10 books from a county my grandfather lived in.  In the first book, I found this about my 2nd great grandfather:

I had never seen that before.

I can’t wait to go back and find more stuff!  I am hoping not to have to wait until I retire, but we shall see….

Have you found treasures at the SLC FamilySearch Library?

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The Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society (SCCHGS) is hosting a Heritage Expo on Saturday, June 13, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Santa Clara Central Park Library.  I’m so sad I can’t make it, as an in-person genealogy even is calling to me!

Here is the information in case YOU can go and bring me back some details!

Step into your past at the Heritage Expo: Research and Resources, an exciting regional gathering for history buffs and family detectives alike! Join us for this fun and free gathering on Saturday, June 13, 2026, from 1-4 pm at the Santa Clara City Library, Central Park Branch, 2635 Homestead Road in Santa Clara. The Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society and the Santa Clara City Library are co-sponsoring this special event.

This is your chance to rub elbows with nationally recognized lineage societies and consult with experts from an array of regional historical and genealogy organizations. Enjoy brief presentations, explore interactive displays, check out vintage cars, and even sample some historical local cuisine while you network with fellow researchers. Come explore your roots in a community of passionate researchers.

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Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes

The Jukebox this month got me to thinking about the cable car controversy that prompted the Song/Advertisement that was posted.  I didn’t know about this so I set off to learn more and went down some rabbit holes (as I tend to do).

By the mid-1940s, San Francisco’s transit system was struggling. Years of heavy wartime use and deferred maintenance had left the cable car infrastructure in poor condition. City leaders, including Mayor Roger Lapham, argued that the aging system was expensive, outdated, and impractical. Modern buses were promoted as a more efficient solution, and plans were announced to replace the Powell Street cable car lines entirely. To many officials, the cable cars were little more than worn-out relics and financial burdens. Supporters of modernization viewed their removal as a necessary step toward the city’s future.

Not everyone agreed.

Leading the opposition was Friedel Klussmann, a civic activist who organized the Citizens’ Committee to Save the Cable Cars. At a time when city politics and business leadership were overwhelmingly male, Klussmann and a coalition of women launched a determined public campaign. They researched the issue, challenged official claims, and argued that the cable cars represented something far more valuable than a balance-sheet expense. They were a living piece of San Francisco’s history, the last surviving cable car system in the United States, and a symbol of the city’s unique identity.

The campaign quickly became a citywide controversy. Newspapers debated the issue, politicians took sides, and voters were asked to decide the cable cars’ fate. Preservationists accused city leaders of using political maneuvering and behind-the-scenes tactics to push the system toward closure, while supporters of removal insisted that sentimentality should not outweigh practical transportation concerns. The battle reflected larger postwar debates taking place across America, where older transit systems were being replaced by automobiles, buses, and freeway construction.

In November 1947, San Francisco voters delivered a decisive verdict. By a margin of more than three to one, they approved a measure protecting the Powell Street cable car lines. Additional efforts in the following years preserved portions of the remaining network, although not every route survived. The five-line system that existed before the controversy was eventually reduced and reorganized into the three cable car lines that continue operating today. Despite those losses, the preservation movement succeeded in saving the heart of the system.

The cable car controversy remains an important reminder that historic preservation often depends on ordinary citizens who are willing to challenge powerful interests. What many officials once dismissed as obsolete transportation is now one of the world’s most recognizable urban landmarks. Thanks to Friedel Klussmann and the activists who fought for their survival, San Francisco’s cable cars continue to climb the city’s hills nearly eighty years later, carrying both residents and visitors through a moving piece of history.

 Sources:
https://www.streetcar.org/75-years-ago-cable-car-war/
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/75-years-after-battle-save-cable-cars
https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/remembered/posts/1316732925195222/
https://sfcablecars.org/stories/politics-tricks-cable-cars

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It happened while I was at a writing retreat in Wyoming for 2 weeks.  To be honest, I was only at the retreat for a week, but we had to drive because my husband’s mother followed NO GENEALOGY RULES and just changed his name all willy nilly when he was a baby without any documentation so he couldn’t get a passport or RealID.  He’s now been to court to legally change his name (at the age of 64) so that he can fly again

That was too much info, but I clearly  still have issues.  ANYWAY, while I was gone, the Jukebox came out!  My fav!  The focus on this one is transportation and I couldn’t decide if I’d send in my Pan-Am story or my railroad story.  Pan-Am is longer and has already been printed elsewhere, so I’ll include it below, and send in my railroad story.

Do you have any transportation industry stories of you or your ancestors?  I’d love to read them in the Jukebox!  Send to:  JukeboxGenealogy@CaliforniaAncestors.org

The Pan-Am Experience.
Repost from July 2015 (https://www.l-ags.org/tracer/Vol_43_3.pdf)
By Deborah Conner Mascot

I was thumbing through a Good Housekeeping magazine recently and came across a short article titled, “The Pan Am Experience.”  Next to it was a picture of what appeared to be the internal organs of a glamorous 1970s passenger airplane, complete with smiling flight attendants dressed to the nines.  From the gist of the headline, I gathered that it was an advertisement to eat how you did on Pan Am in the 1970s.

For only $295 ($355 if you want the fancier upper dining deck) you can board a replica Pan Am 747 and never actually fly anywhere.   At the check-in desk, instead of getting strip-searched and herded like cattle, you get a ‘70s boarding pass complete with ticket jacket and carry-on tags.  Using your boarding pass, you now have a chance to enjoy the lounge without having to sign up for the airlines’ outrageously heavy interest Mastercard program.  In the lounge, with drink in hand, you can visit the authentic Pan Am memorabilia.

When I was growing up, my father was a graveyard airline mechanic for Pan-Am at San Francisco Airport.  Without implicating my family in the demise and eventual bankruptcy of Pan-Am, I believe it’s okay to mention that at one time or another we lived on much of the Pan Am memorabilia that you will see in your Clipper Club lounge.  Our coats and luggage all featured the logo, having been “borrowed” from the airline.  My childhood art masterpieces were done on the Pan Am computer punch cards of the 1970s. Many of our food items, including the Chateaubriand served on special family occasions, were “leftovers” from Pan Am.  Just seeing the logo for me is like many of you might feel seeing the wallpaper that adorned your childhood home.

After you peruse the items of my childhood, you will board the Air Hollywood replica of Pan Am’s first Boeing 747.  Having not actually experienced the Air Hollywood version, I can only imagine that you get to board this without the person behind you crashing your heels with his luggage or the woman in front of you taking the last spot in the overhead compartment.

Once boarded, your Stewardess (not flight attendant) will be wearing the original tightly fitted uniform and you will be offered a cocktail while soothing music fills the cabin of the fake airplane.  While they perform a safety demonstration, you get to sit back in comfortable, roomy seats, rather than being shoe-horned into the spot between the smelly bible salesman and the extremely large woman who may or may not be a circus performer.Rather than having peanut packets thrown at you, you are served a gourmet four-course meal on fancy China (that may or may not have been used with the Chateaubriand during my special family dinners).  And instead of having plastic cups thrown at you with 6 precise cubes of ice and four exact fingers of cola, you are served your choice of beverage in crystal glasses that may or may not have been my childhood everyday glasses.

During his 10 years at Pan Am, my father made lifelong friends.  It wasn’t until Dad’s funeral that I learned that some of my “uncles” had only worked with him for a couple of months before moving on from Pan Am, but they never moved on from one another.  There are many stories I cannot share that I learned about Dad during the after-funeral party, and most also featured Pan Am in some way or another.

Pan Am was a pioneer airline, in both its early routes through continents and in its fostering of a family-like atmosphere for the employees.  The Kelly Act of 1925 authorized government mail contracts to private carriers.  As a result, many aircraft owners began air carrier services, including Pan American World Airways in 1927, when it won a contract to deliver mail to and from Cuba and the United States.  By 1930, it expanded to include mail between Mexico and Latin America and the United States. At this same time, air carriers were forced to carry passengers not just cargo to remain competitive.  In 1939, Pan Am was the first United States passenger service to Europe and then provided military transport to Europe, Africa, and Asia.  By the middle of the 1970s, Pan Am had become one of the world’s largest air carriers.  Deregulation, recession, turmoil in world politics, airline airfare wars, and high gas prices, caused Pan Am to lose ground in the mid-1980s.

With their fleet aging and no money to purchase new aircraft, Pan Am was spending too much money on keeping their flights in the air– over $800 an hour for maintenance costs for every hour an aircraft was in flight.  It should be well noted here that my mechanic father was not earning a cent of this $800 an hour per aircraft, as he was no longer working at Pan Am.  He was in the lay-off program of years before, but if he had been among the mechanics left, he would have used his Macgyver-like skills to use spit, glue, and duct tape to keep those planes in the air for far less than $800 per hour (we should all be thankful for that lay-off).  Pan Am filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and, while they tried to reopen in 1997, they had to shut their doors once again when they couldn’t pay their creditors.

While they may not have been the best of business people, I will forever be grateful to Pan Am for my “uncles,” for my winter-wear, and for giving this poor child from a poor family the taste of Chateaubriand, which I found at the time tastes best with a hint of catsup.

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One of our CGS members wrote to me with a book recommendation.  I love to read, but sometimes it’s hard to find time.  That said, the intro she sent was intriguing and so I downloaded the book to my Kindle and had to force myself to put it down to go to sleep.

It’s a historical fiction written by a retired physician from Northern California.  It’s based on the life of his grandmother, who lived in San Francisco in the 1920s through Prohibition.  I’ll put his summary below, but what catches me is that the stories nearly mirror those told to me by “my” Mariani family who lived there during the same time.  Getting different stories, but with the same backdrop makes it come to life even more!  I haven’t got to the end, but I do highly recommend.  I downloaded on my Kindle, but I’m going to order a couple of “real” copies- one for my library downstairs and one for my local used bookstore!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-bootlegger-s-daughter-a-san-francisco-tale/341362077370bbb1?ean=9798993547510&next=t

Here are his words:

My book is titled The Bootlegger’s Daughter: A San Francisco Tale. The book is a historical fiction but based heavily on fact. The book was written based on detailed notes including letters from the 1940’s that my uncle collected and interviews with relatives during the 1990’s and a more recent interview with one of my aunts. 

You will find out what is fact vs fiction in the author’s notes at the end. About 85 percent of the family story is based on fact and 100 percent of San Francisco’s history is factual. I had to add some fiction where there were gaps, including conversations.

It is about a girl (my grandmother Ann White born in 1910) the eldest of 6 children born to immigrant parents from Ireland. Her father William White put an illegal still in their family home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood in SanFrancisco in the early 1920’s. He expanded his operation by leasing a home next door where he added a still and kept a mistress. Ann and her sister were tasked with monitoring the stills and delivering their father’s concealed whiskey via a child’s play wagon stacked with dolls, to speakeasies, homes and back room bars. Her father develops severe alcoholism and in a bout of alcohol withdrawal called delirium tremens he cuts one of his fingers off with a hatchet in front of his family. He dies, not too long after, leaving the family poor. Her mother has a mental breakdown shortly after and Ann is left with the aftermath. The story follows her throughout her life having to overcome many challenges with her closest sister.

Like a James Michener novel I weave the city’s history throughout the story through conversations, observations and character placement. It’s not a deep dive but Topics covered include the Gold Rush, Chinese/Irish riots, Emperor Norton and Mark Twain, The Embarcadero, Golden Gate Park, Chinatown including the bubonic plague eradication, Japantown and the origins of the fortune cookie, WWI, San Francisco politics in the early 1900’s, San Francisco Worlds Fairs, Prohibition including its roots, the 1930 fight between Max Baer and Frankie”Campbell” Camilli, The New Deal Program, Dock worker strikes, Lilian Coit and Coit Tower, WWII, The U.N., the Beatniks, The Key System, SF sports, The Beatles concert at Candlestick, The Summer of Love, and the assassination of Mayor Moscone and Councilman Harvey Milk and the subsequent trial of Dan White using the “Twinkie defense”

I am a first time author and a retired family physician ( 29 years). One of my degrees at UCSD was American History and I currently do volunteer work with Placer County Museums and give tours of Old Town Auburn and an old Hotel/ farm house called the Bernhard House.

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I post this every year on Memorial Day.  Memorial Day is to honor those who have died in war. I’m lucky that many of my ancestors seem to have either missed serving or survived. But in the past couple of years I have learned about my grandfather’s cousin, Howard Albert Conner, who died in World War II in a plane crash in Panama.

Howard was born on August 23, 1918 in Huron County, South Dakota, just six months younger than my grandfather. While he was in high school in Huron, South Dakota, he worked at the theater and in the shoe store.

There was a write-up about Howard in the South Dakota World War II Memorial site. The site is, “…dedicated to the tens of thousands of South Dakota men and women who contributed to the victory in World War II. Today, we know them as our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.”

It is my goal in this post to make sure that even though Howard has no descendants of his own to remember him, he has many of us, both in and out of the Conner family, who remember and thank him. He was and always will be important.

Front (left to right): Harriet Conner, Fern Conner (Grampa’s sisters)
Middle (left to right): Pierre Conner (GRAMPA!), Howard Conner
Back (left to right): Lucille Conner, Irene Conner (Howard’s sisters)

Left to right: Pierre Conner, Howard Conner

Left to right: William Conner (grandfather to Pierre Conner), Howard Conner, Lucille Conner, Hattie Price (grandmother to Pierre Conner)

Once posted on the South Dakota World War II Memorial site:

2nd Lieutenant
Howard Albert Conner
Huron, South Dakota
Beadle County
August 23, 1918 – March 26, 1944

Killed in Plane Crash near Cape Pacora, Republic of Panama

Howard Albert Conner was born August 23, 1918 in Huron, South Dakota. Howard was the third child of Albert and Mary Jane Conner. Howard had two sisters, Mrs. Marvin R. Murphy and Mrs. Loran R. Blackford. Howard grew up in Huron, South Dakota, attending Huron High School, graduating in 1937. While he was in school, he worked at the Huron theatre and as a clerk at Tunnell’s Shoe Store for one year.

He entered the Army in February 1941 taking his training at Fort Snelling, Minnesota and transferred to Fort Lewis, Washington and in August 1942 to Camp Gerber, Oklahoma. He served with a tank destroyer battalion until January 1943 when he transferred to the Army Air Force. On November 3, 1943, he graduated at Aloe Army Air Field, Victoria, Texas receiving a commission as a second lieutenant. From there he went to Panama where he completed a transitional course at Sixth Air Force Fighter Command School. He was assigned to a fighter squadron in the Caribbean area.

2nd Lieutenant Howard Conner perished in the Republic of Panama on March 26, 1944. His plane crashed near Cape Pacora, Republic of Panama, which is in the Panama Canal Zone. He is buried at the Riverside Cemetery, Huron, South Dakota. His name is also inscribed on a granite obelisk in front of the Huron Public Library. This memorial remembers “those who served and those who died.”

This entry was respectfully submitted by Brandi Levtzow, 9th Grade, Redfield High School, Redfield, South Dakota, May 17, 2002. Among the sources of information for this entry were an application for a SD veteran’s bonus payment and newspaper clippings.

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The Spring 2026 issue of The California Nugget is published and on its way! CGS members can now access the digital version on our website: https://www.californiaancestors.org/submit-to-the-nugget/. Mailed copies should arrive by the end of the month.

In anticipation of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence, we invited readers to share stories of their ancestors in 1776. Lisa Gorrell’s column offers ideas for celebrating “America250” in your own family history.

Our feature articles include Susan Skilton’s “The Abandoned Headstone,” about solving the mystery of a headstone found far from its original site. Elena Wong Viscovich has written “Reframing Ming Quong,” which examines the myths and facts about the early 20^th-century Bay Area institutions created to house orphaned and displaced Chinese children. We also review Sunny Jane Morton’s book Searching for Sisters: A Guide to Researching Catholic Nuns in the United States. There’s lots more, including updates on regional gatherings, events and classes, and a sneak preview of our new home in Berkeley!

I was recently notified that the Northern California Chapter of APG will merge with the Southern California Chapter, and this got me thinking about what APG really is.

Despite the word “professional” in the name, APG is not just for people who make a living researching family trees. It is also a great resource for hobby genealogists who simply love digging through old records, solving family mysteries, and learning more about the past. Founded in 1979, APG helps connect people who are passionate about genealogy by offering webinars, conferences, chapter meetings, and networking opportunities. Whether someone is learning how to read old handwriting, exploring DNA matches, or trying to properly cite a census record, APG provides education and support that can help researchers improve their skills while meeting others who share the same obsession with family history.

One of the things that makes APG especially important is its focus on doing genealogy the right way. Family history research is more than just collecting names on a chart. Good genealogy involves careful research, accurate citations, and treating family stories with respect. APG encourages members to follow a code of ethics that promotes honesty, professionalism, and privacy, especially when working with sensitive topics like adoption, DNA surprises, or living relatives. The organization also helps people find professional genealogists who specialize in different areas, such as military records, immigration research, or specific regions of the world.

For beginners, APG can feel like a giant toolbox filled with helpful advice, educational opportunities, and experienced researchers willing to share what they know.  A visit to the website (https://www.apgen.org/) shows a fast way to find professional genealogists to help.  One more click gets you to the calendar of events (https://members.apgen.org/members/calendar4_responsive.php?org_id=APG).  Once you see all the great things there, you will want to become a member (https://members.apgen.org/members/newmem/new-mem-reg.php?org_id=APG).

Are you already a member of APG? What is your favorite benefit?

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