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Bryan’s Rest, Humboldt County, California, from Swanlund Baker photograph collection at Humboldt State University. https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/swanlund_baker/184/

By Maureen Hanlon

In hindsight, we always could have found a shorter path to our genealogy finds.  But what’s the fun in that?  And taking a class is also always a great way to get fresh eyes.

After attending Melinda Kashuba’s first source-packed lecture on maps last Saturday, I turned back to some research from a 2015 trip to Humboldt County. I had found a photograph then of “Bryan’s Rest,” identified as the home of my great-grandfather, John Wesley Bryan (1854-1924), but I had no idea where it was. Census and voter records from 1890 to 1920 gave his residence variously as Larabee, Hydesville, Shively, Prairie Bluff, Peppertown, and Scotia, but I knew he had pretty much stayed in the same place. At that point I just kind of gave up.

Now, armed with Melinda’s guidance, I went back to the sources and looked more carefully at them for mention of landmarks, distances and alternate names. Using the topo map she pointed us to, I found I could narrow down the likely place even more, using the railroad set of icons and where bluffs and the lowlands were located, and the right side of the Eel River.

Then, with a much smaller possible area, I went back to an online property map from California State Humboldt (Melinda also mentioned colleges and universities as a great source) and there was his name! I had missed this section of the map the first time, not knowing where to focus. There was the railroad, the tunnel, the Eel River bottoms and a reasonable location from the school house the children went to on horseback. Also were three of the six village/town names from the census and voter records (a fourth place, Bluff Prairie, is now known as Shively.)

Belcher Atlas of Humboldt County, California : compiled from official records and private sources and surveys. Author: Belcher Abstract & Title Co., ©1921-1922 https://library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/sheet13.pdf

Melinda offers a second class, “Hands-On Map Tools,” this coming Saturday, September 25, when she will demonstrate how to created layered historical maps. Don’t miss it!