The Shinn family's archives are in many locations across the region, state, and country. 

Note also: Dr. Robert Fisher's collections are split up and in multiple archives. Researchers who wish to learn about the Shinn Family need to know that there are Shinn family items in multiple archives in Fremont -  the Fremont Main library in the Maurice Marks section, the Museum of Local History, and the Shinn Museum.

Copies available of some references in the Shinn Museum library.

• Biography of a Baby 1900 Read on Google Books Milicent Shinn

• The "Overland Monthly" Under Milicent Washburn Shinn, 1883-1894: A Study in Regional Publishing," Grant Skelley thesis. 1968 Proquest. 

• Untold Lives: The First Generation of American Women Psychologists, Scarborough and Furumoto, Google books, 1987; An honor to be included. However the chapter "The Family Claim: Ties that Bound Milicent Shinn" ignored the work with the ACA that Milicent continued after her PhD. It ignored her 1907 publication. It also ignores the family dynamics, because Joseph, Florence, and a nurse also cared for Grandma Lucy.

•  Female Networks for Science: Programs and Politics 2012 Christine Von Oertzen. According to von Oertzen, she encountered Milicent when she wrote this book. The International Federation of University Women was formed in 1918-1919. It was founded by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (ACA which was later the AAUW, the American Association of University Women.  WWI changed the agenda of the ACA. "Of education in judgment, in width of view, in knowledge, in tolerance, in a sense of proportion among individuals, and in mutual respect and sympathy and mutual help and cooperation among the peoples of the world. We believe that this is the beginning of the organized training of women to be citizens of the world, and through women, of men too, . . . in short, the enterprise of preparing some portion of human material for the League of Nations that is to be. "

• Science in the Cradle: Milicent Shinn and Her Home-Based Network of Baby Observers, 1890–1910, Christine Von Oertzen; 2013 Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany; Wiley Online Library; Von Oertzen covers Milicent's work with the ACA and home-based baby studies. She discovered Milicent from the international branch of the ACA, the pre-cursor of the AAUW.

• Far More Than Dutiful Daughter: Milicent Shinn's Child Study and Education Advocacy After 1898, Dr. Elissa Rodkey; 2016 Crandall University, New Brunswick, Canada; available from APA PsychNet or Taylor Francis Online. Dr. Rodkey covers Milicent's later work and explores the family dynamics.

• “We Feminine Foresters”: Women, Conservation, and the USDA Forest Service, 1850-1970 includes Julia Shinn, wife of Charles. Mentions an article June 1930 American Forests and Forest Life about Shinn, Julia T. “The Ranger’s Boss.”  The limited search turned up this.

• Sweet Peas of Civility

• The University of California, Its Women, and the Schools

• We were interviewed in 2023 by Jiayu Jeng of KTSF26 on May 5, 2023 and May 12, 2023 How fun! And yes, the ginkgo did fall down shortly thereafter.

• Where Women Made History - Milicent Shinn

• The Story of the Shinn Ranch  (Kathryn Kasch, descendant of Charles Howard Shinn)

• Joshua Fong's memoirs include recollections about his family ties in the area when his family came after 1917. The Reverend Fong So-Yick and his wife Low He Wan (Annie) came to California because of religious persecution. They had cousins and uncles who worked for the Shinn Ranch and the California Nursery Company. Joshua Fong said that he drove the cherry truck for harvest. Eventually the Fongs had a farm in current day northern Fremont off of Fremont Boulevard near Beard Road.

• Shinn-anigans blog is about the Shinn family, Washington Township in the 1800s, and beyond!

• The The Illustrated Shinns is an old project, newly revived to blog on bits of interesting Shinn history.

• Charles Howard Shinn's wikipedia page was created by a Shinn House volunteer.  Frequent updates and checks are done on the accuracy of the updates. However be mindful that anyone can update wikipedia and so you should always check the references.

• Charles Shinn's Library what did he read and what did he sell in 1917?

• Milicent Shinn's page was created by a neighbor and has been updated by a Shinn House volunteer as well as others.

• The history of the Shinn family in Europe and America / Josiah Hazen Shinn We've noticed some inaccuracies, such as where Annie was born. She was born in Red Rock according to many family documents and the census records.

Josiah Royce Historian in Quest of Community Royce was Anna Head's brother-in-law. His sister lived in Newark. The Shinn archives have a picture of him visiting Milicent and Joe. He was a celebrated orator. He attended Cal. PhD from Johns Hopkins. Harvard.

The California Revealed Partner Institution page is here. Items on this California State Library project are also hosted on Calisphere and on the Internet Archive. If you want to search within the WTMOLH archives, it is best to use the Internet Archive project. For example, here is a search for Shinn that reveals many Shinn items held by the Museum.

Newspapers Online

• California Digital Newspaper Collection we could spend all day here! If you sign up you can correct the OCR for some badly scanned newspapers.

• Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchive.com are available at the Fremont Main Library Has the Argus. 

• San Francisco Public Library - Some San Francisco papers do not show up in CDNC. You will need an SFPL library card to access online at the SFPF website. See their Historical Digital Newspapers Collections and on microfilm. 

• California Revealed for Washington Township Museum of Local History has local newspapers: The Township Register 1891-1916, not contiguous; Niles Herald 1899-1904.  CDNC might have all these issues of Niles Herald. But not Township Register as of 2024.

• New York digital newspapers - looking for Charles at Johns Hopkins? Or writing after that

• Probably continuously out of date Wikipedia list of online newspapers,

• Put Butte County newspaper access here. It's kind of tricky.

• The Portal to Texas History for researching the Watermelon Riot in Panama and hopefully some passenger lists to Panama.

• NEH US Newspaper Program

• Alameda County Independent and Alameda County Reporter - microfilm scans in Shinn House museum archives.

• ELEPHIND used to have an interface like CDNC and includes newspapers outside of California plus some that are in the Library of Congress. The Elephind.com online newspaper search system has been taken offline. To view free and searchable online newspapers see the list of newspaper projects on the Veridian website

• Chinese language newspapers? 

  • SFPL Librarian suggested looking up Newspapers by Title in the Periodical Finder or the Classic Catalog.

  • There is a proprietary database that SFPL does not subscribe to called Early American Newspapers, Series 13, 1803-1916: The American West which has several Chinese language newspapers included. From what I can tell, it may have been released around 2015. You can view the title list here. It appears the UC system has a subscription, so you may be able to reach out to UC Berkeley to see if you could visit their campus to access the database.

  • There is this website, dated 2015, that lists some Chinese historical newspapers. It is from the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum.

This is more of a starting point than an all-in-one resource because so much has changed in the last nine years. It has some embedded scans of the newspapers, but not a functioning database of digitized newspaper content.

• • From that list, I further searched out digital copies and two are available openly:

    • One issue of the Oriental (Tang fan gong bao) is available digitally

  • Another newspaper by the title of the Oriental (Tung-Ngai San-Luk) is available here. Click "view more issues"

  • There are a handful of issues of 少年中國 The young China available

  • Chung Sai Yat Po newspaper is digitized. Click "online items available"

Sources of letters

• NYPL

Directories & Census records & Assessors maps

• City Directories of Oakland and some East Bay 

• Fremont Main Library California Revealed phone directories (Internet Archive collection from California Revealed) of Alameda County 1897 to 1923 with some San Francisco (California Revealed version). There was an 1877 directory as of 2024 in the library. Possibly on the online directories above.

• Washington Township Museum of Local History California Revealed has assessors maps and lots of other stuff, including Shinn Stuff. Shinn

• San Francisco Blue Book - lists women's club 1907 and search Hathitrust for more

• Alameda County, California Online Historical Directories

• Making of America (MoA) "is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints."

• Blue and Gold all years

• Oakland Directories SFPL except 1873

Souvenir Books

• Alameda County Illustrated Souvenir Book 1898

• Picturesque Oakland 1889

• California Story of the Files, 1893, issued for the Columbian Exposition, by Ella Sterling Cummins AKA Aurora  Esmeralda

Histories of the Township and County

• The centennial year book of Alameda County, California : containing a summary of the discovery and settlement of California, a description of the Contra Costa under Spanish, Mexican, and American rule, an account of the organization and settlement of Alameda County ... also, a gazetteer of each township, useful local and general statistical information, appropriate for the present time, to which are added biographical sketches of prominent pioneers and public men / by William Halley 1876 

• History of Alameda County, California, including its geology, topography, soil, and productions Munro; Also Hathitrust

• THE PATTERSON FAMILY AND RANCH: SOUTHERN ALAMEDA COUNTY IN TRANSITION - 3 Volumes Find I (Chinese workers & neighbors), II, and III (Chinese Truck Farming)

• History of Washington Township (1904) compiled and written by the Country Club of Washington Township Research Committee

• Past and Present of Alameda County By Joseph Eugene Baker 1914 no preview/online p. 163 has something about Shinn orchards. 979.465 BAKER

Dictionaries 

We wondered what the word "alien" or "heathen" meant back in 1880, for example. 

• • Websters 1828

  • "Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language : being the authentic edition of Webster's unabridged dictionary, comprising the issues of 1864, 1879, and 1884 /thoroughly revised and much enlarged under the supervision of Noah Porter ... to which is now added a supplement ... W.T. Harris."

University

• History of the University of California Online books

  • 1881 history of UC

  • Register of the University of California ! Annie is listed in 

General Help

• • Reddit r/AskHistorians

Maps

Local

• Inventory of the State Land Office Records anything in here?

• MapRank Search is really great! You can input your location and select dates and find maps of those eras. Georeference from there to find out where locates were in today's landscape.

• HistoricAerials lets you select a location and then step through time.

• Diseños

• 1833 The Harbour of San Francisco, Nueva California. Views: The Entrance to San Francisco Harbour

• 1844 Port De San Francisco Dans La Haute Californie.

• 1849 Wichtigsten Hafen und Rheden, Goldregion von Californien.

• 1853 San Lorenzo for Addison Crane Higley 

• 1852 Initiatory survey of the lands of the "Mission San Jose" [Calif.] : under an order of the U.S. Land Commissioner dated April 1, 1852 / surveyed in the month of May 1852 under an order of the U.S. Surveyor Gena., dated April 28th, 1852 by C.C. Tracy, U.S. Deputy Surveyor for Pico

• 1852 Farallones, San Francisco Bay.

• 1863 ex-Mission San José from UC Berkeley which has other interesting suggestions for maps

• 1871 Routes from San Francisco to the Yosemite Valley.

• 1873: The hard-to-find 1873 Allardt map of Alameda County; Yale; shows the original 1866 railroad into Alameda Cañon which was abandoned around 1870.

• 1873: South Sheet: Map Of The Region Adjacent To The Bay Of San Francisco. Shows Shinn, Beard, Indian Mounds

• 1878: Thompson and West no. 4 and no. 5. Handy from those pages are "Related" and "Thumbnails" which look pretty similar. Also the Georeference button is really fun to see what's there today. Not always totally accurate, but pretty close. Stuart Guedon and Dr. Fisher reprinted this book in black and white in 1976 so you can see the text as well as the maps. 

• Detail of Washington Corners and Vallejo Mills Thompson & West 1878

• Alameda County 1880 Oakland Daily & Weekly Tribune - David Rumsey. You can print from David Rumsey or find it here, too.

• 1910 Southern Pacific Timetable with map. The second rail line through the ranch was SP.

• 1915 Western Pacific timetable.

• The  1996 USGS Geologic map of Alameda County

• David Rumsey Map Rank App. Plug in Fremont California, make the sider show only the era that you want.

• Someday, we will figure out how to find the really old survey maps on the Alameda County Public Works website

• Online USGS Topo maps

• Photos of ships and Oakland in 1887

Elsewhere Maps

• Kyoto historic maps Find where the Japanese nursery was located in 1876.

General Maps

• Topo

Rain

• The 1955 Flood map Hydrologic Investigations Atlas HA-54  shows that the cottage and Milicent's house were not flooded. 

• Guide to Bay Creeks page on 1955 flood

• J.C. Shinn's Rain book 

Assessors

• Assessors maps from MOLH 

• Abstract of Lands ex-Mission San Jose

• Current Assessors maps

Geography

• Alameda Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Study

Archives

• California State Archives

• Fruitful Legacy NPS 

• Heritage Orchard Conference 2023-2024 recordings

• 1915 study on Apricots in Niles

• Solano county (has great fruit drying picture)

Archival Accessioning Best Practices from AASLH