Participate
Telling Our Stories
Most of our families have stories of coming to California.
Would you like to participate in projects that discover and record our immigrant histories?
Help us preserve your stories as well as the histories of the early Chinese people who came to the Washington Township.
Help others learn how to use the StoryCorps App.
Our Stories are History
StoryCorps
Our Chinese History exhibit in 2019 will tell the stories of Chinese immigrants who came to the Washington Township from the 1860's until after WWII. Their stories are mostly incomplete - told by records from early ranches and nurseries, from census records, from photos - but sometimes we have personal accounts.
Tell your own family story of immigration into California with the StoryCorps App. Store it for posterity into the Library of Congress.
Read about StoryCorps and find out about the StoryCorps App. How-to Guides will help you get started with the app.
Dave Isay: "Take this tool and figure out how we can use it all across America and around the world. So that instead of recording thousands of StoryCorps interviews a year we could potentially record tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Or maybe even more.
Imagine for example a national homework assignment where every high school student studying U.S. History across the country records an interview with an elder over Thanksgiving so that in one single weekend an entire generation of American lives and experiences are captured." TED Talk March 25, 2015
Our Old Buildings have Stories
The Chinese Bunkhouse Preservation Project
This project was formed to preserve the bunkhouse at Shinn Historical Park & Arboretum. This modest structure with a big story started the search to learn more about the Chinese who worked for the Shinn family. The Chinese came to the Washington Township starting at least since the 1860's. This search for history created the "Chinese History Project" at the Museum of Local History.
Learn about this project on Facebook and on the website. Many of the "Bunkmates" are also on the Chinese History Project.
How Can You Help?
Would you like to help us better understand the history of the Washington Township?
Would you like to write mini-articles about one of these topics for a blog?
Would you like to learn how to archive items into the Museum's PastPerfect database?
Help us find and document references to the Chinese in our archives
We wish to make available information for scholarly research, learning opportunities, and exhibits for the community.
- Scan records and photos from the local historic farms, ranches, and nurseries and make them available to the public on the Internet Archive or museum website.
- Participate in a census mining project. The records mention occupations and relationships. Many of the men were married, but their families might have been in China.
- Come to the genealogy talk and learn how to research our National Archives and other sources for information on entering and leaving the US.
- Search the internet for references in the newspapers, journals, and other documents. Search other sources of local newspapers.
- Find out more about certain individuals who are in archives.
- Discover how produce was distributed in the early days before supermarkets
- Determine how labor was contracted in our area. Some records indicate a relationship with organizations in San Francisco. Others with extended family.
- Research topics mentioned in Joshua Fong memoirs, such as the Oakland herbalist who had a nightclub and visited the Fong Family Farm.
- Find out more about the visit to the East Bay by the Chinese Embassy. What was the purpose of their visit here and the East Coast.
- Discover more about Alvarado, which probably had the biggest local Chinatown and over time suffered many set-backs. There is already a paper written on it, but is there more to learn? There was also mention of a Chinatown in Warm Springs, but little is known about it.
- Learn how the Chinese Exclusion Act affected the Chinese in the area?
- Would you like to help create exhibits and raise funds to create exhibit materials?
- Would you like to help with our first exhibit on the "Chinese History of the Washington Township"
- Would you like to help with an exhibit at the Museum of Local History that covers the later years, shortly before our towns became Fremont.