The latest on l'affaire Bellesiles

[Volokh, Eugene]

        FYI, for those still interested in that thread we had about this
last year, check out the following.  The particular argument here is of
course just one small item, itself of tangential connection to the Arming
America thesis, and thus to the Second Amendment debates that triggered this
thread on this list in the first place.  But like the thirteenth chime of
the clock, it seems to be not only wrong itself, but to cast doubt on all
that came before it.



        1)  Prof. Bellesiles' statement that he had located in the Contra
Costa County Historical Society History Center the San Francisco probate
records he cited in his book -- records that his critics say could not have
been available because all the probate records were lost in the 1906 fire.
I quote here from the full statement at
http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2002/decjan/whatsnew.html:

Professor of History Michael Bellesiles,
author of the controversial book Arming America, has provided
the Academic Exchange a response to one of the allegations
that he fabricated his research. James Lindgren, a Northwestern
University legal scholar, argues that Bellesiles falsely claimed
that he used California probate records from the 1850s housed
in the San Francisco Superior Court. Lindgren and others, including
David Mehegan of the Boston Globe, later reported that
according to courthouse officials, those records were lost in
the earthquake and fire of 1906 and are not known to be in existence
elsewhere. Bellesiles later was quoted as saying he could not
remember exactly where he had done the research. Here, Bellesiles
offers an explanation:

        I was not hallucinating when I read the San Francisco probate files.
They are housed in the
            California History Center. . . .  Pasker Chair of American
History
            Christopher Waldrep of San Francisco State University went to
its new Martinez, California,
            location and saw these records. He took me there after the
annual meeting of the American
            Historical Association, held in San Francisco January 3 through
6.

            As I have said in the past, not many California probate files
are left from the 1850s and 1860s, but
            they do exist. I have sent photocopies (just the first few pages
of three files, each of which contained
            dozens of pages) to several people, including a reporter for the
Chronicle of Higher Education,
            who is working on an article, and the New York Times, the Boston
Globe, and the Organization of
            American Historians newsletter. I also plan to scan a few pages
onto my web site . . . .



        2)  The History Center's response, copied from
http://www.cocohistory.com/frm-news.html:

Notes on Supposed San Francisco Records in the Contra
         Costa County Historical Society History Center.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY
MARTINEZ, CA

The History Center of the Contra Costa County Historical Society is the
primary repository of the early
original records of Contra Costa County, including a large number of Contra
Costa County probate case
files. The Historical Society was organized in 1951. We opened our archives
in 1984 in temporary
quarters in Pleasant Hill, California, moving to the present permanent home
in Martinez, California on
May 1, 2000.

Recently there has been great interest in our collection of probate records
from the 1850s, because of the
claims of Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles that he located a
substantial cache of San
Francisco probate inventories from that period in our collection of Contra
Costa County records.
Because the San Francisco probate inventories are widely believed by
historians, genealogists, and
archivists to have been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and
fire, locating a cache of San
Francisco County probate records would be a major historical find. As much
as we wish this to be the
case, we have no evidence that such a cache of San Francisco County records
exists at the History
Center. We are a Contra Costa County archive, we hold Contra Costa County
records, not San
Francisco records.

To the best of our ability, we have investigated the claims that Professor
Bellesiles made about our
collection in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and in Emory University's
Academic Exchange.

Michael Bellesiles wrote that he sent copies of pages from these supposed
San Francisco County records
to various journalists. We received photocopies of 26 pages of records that
Bellesiles reportedly sent to
one of these journalists and compared them against our records in the
History Center. When Professor
Bellesiles visited the History Center in January of 2002 he made
approximately 30 photocopies. In doing
so he failed to copy the verso where the identifiers for the court cases
are, and where there was no
identifier he neglected to note the case file being copied. Without this
information it is very difficult to
confirm that the photocopies were from documents in our collection. Still we
spent over 15 working hours
searching the case files to find and verify that the originals were indeed
in our collection. We were
successful in all but 3 or 4 pages. We could probably verify those if
Professor Bellesiles could provide us
with the names of all the case files he copied.

Based on checking his 26 pages of evidence against our records, we have
reached the following
conclusions, which are of course, subject to revision based on further
investigation:

   1.Every identifiable estate in the 26 pages was a Contra Costa County
estate, not a San Francisco
     County estate.

   2.Every identifiable decedent in the 26 pages was a Contra Costa County
resident, not a San
     Francisco County resident.

   3.Every judge who signed orders in the 26 pages was a Contra Costa County
judge, not a San
     Francisco County judge.

   4.The only clerk who signed an order in the 26 pages signed as "Clerk" of
the "Probate Court
     Contra Costa County."

   5.Bellesiles makes reference to 1872 tax assessment records and includes
a copy of one in the 26
     pages. Its heading is: "Assessment List, County of Contra Costa,
1872-73." This is from a Contra
     Costa County taxpayer and taxing authority, not from San Francisco.

If a probate file is even partially complete, it is usually easy to
determine in which county the estate was
probated. Probate administration is a civil court case. One need only look
at the court, the judge, and the
clerk who are handling the case. Bellesiles' 26 pages of our records show no
evidence of being from San
Francisco County estates, courts, judges, or clerks.

Examining the 26 pages of Bellesiles' probate records that were supplied to
us, it appears that Professor
Bellesiles merely photocopied estate documents that contained the word "San
Francisco" somewhere in
them. For example, one of his documents was an affidavit from a San
Francisco newspaper that ran an
advertisement for a Contra Costa County estate sale: "Pursuant to an order
of the Hon. the Probate
Court of the county of Contra Costa . . . in the town of Martinez." This
affidavit, signed by a San
Francisco notary public, states that it is a Contra Costa County estate.
There was no newspaper in
Contra Costa County until 1858, therefore it was common practice to publish
legal notices in the San
Francisco newspaper.

We are not claiming that there are no early San Francisco documents anywhere
in our archive (or in any
other Northern California repository). Occasionally, in a Contra Costa
County civil or criminal case,
some issue might arise that might cause a San Francisco probate document to
be used as evidence in a
Contra Costa County case. We have located two such cases, but none so far in
the 1850s or early
1860s. We certainly do not have "an entire bookcase of probate record files"
from San Francisco
County. From what we know, it would appear to be impossible to count guns in
San Francisco probate
inventories from 1849-50 or 1858-59 in our collection, since we have no such
inventories.

We were disappointed to read Michael Bellesiles' criticism of our staff and
History Center. In the Emory
Academic Exchange he states: "the staff appeared unaware that they had any
probate materials in their
collection." In fact, all of our dedicated volunteer staff know that the
probates along with the civil and
criminal case files are the core of our collection. We have been directing
researchers to these records
every week since 1984. The Director of the Center was present when we helped
Bellesiles find probate
and tax records in Jan of this year [2002], and she has worked with our
Civil and Probate case file
collection since 1984.

Further, Bellesiles mistakenly calls us the "California History Center,"
which would suggest that we have
records outside Contra Costa County. We are instead the Contra Costa County
History Center, and our
official name is the Contra Costa County Historical Society History Center,
as is evident on our web site.
Contrary to Bellesiles claim that we do not have a web site, we have had one
since 1998. While we
welcome family history and genealogy researchers, the majority of our
researchers have been writers,
attorneys, academics, environmentalists, local governments and commercial
historical research firms.

Last, we cannot confirm that Professor Bellesiles did substantial research
in our collection in 1993 (as he
claims) or at any other time before his visit in January, 2002. We do not
remember him visiting our
collection before his recent visit. We have searched our log books and
invoices for the years 1993, 1994,
1995 and 1996 and find no record for research fees or photocopies. Further,
we are not cited or
acknowledged in his book, something we always expect and receive. During
Professor Bellesiles recent
visit he did not reveal his primary reason for the visit. He did not tell us
that he had been in our archives
before and now wished to confirm aspects of his previous research. He did
not say he was the author of a
book and needed some help confirming his previous work. Had he done so we
would have immediately
begun a search of our invoices and log books. We only discovered after his
visit, when we began getting
phone calls from both scholars and reporters, that we were in the eye of a
hurricane. We had to learn
from others what it was Professor Bellesiles really needed. We have, in
response to our unwitting
involvement and on our own initiative, completed the search of our old
invoices with the result stated
above. We hope that this clears up a large number of points that have
recently arisen about the Contra
Costa County History Center and its collection.

Betty Maffei, Director
Contra Costa County History Center
email: cchistry at ix.netcom.com





This document last updated: 27 JANUARY 2002

Following are some questions and answers that we have dealt with over the
past couple of weeks from
some of the national media:

Q. Where is the California History Center?
A. Not here, we have never been known by that name.

Q. When did Bellesiles visit the Contra Costa County History Center?
A. Our Visitor's Register records his visits to our archive in January 2002.


Q. What probate records do you have?
A. We have two distinctly different types of probate records. We are the
official repository for the
records of the Contra Costa County Superior Court records. The collection
continues to grow as transfers
are made from non-publicly accessible storage facilities. We also possess
4500 to 5000 civil, criminal and
probate case files covering the years 1850-1920's. These were salvaged by
our founder Louis Stein over
a period of several years prior to 1984. Case files differ a great deal from
the bound ledgers that contain
the Superior Court's official records. We estimate we currently have about
1700 individual probate case
files.

Q. When did we get the probate case files?
A. They were given to the Historical Society by Louis Stein, local historian
and co-founder of the Contra
Costa Historical Society in 1984.

Q. Do we have all Contra Costa County probate files?
A. No. Case files were also distributed by Stein to community societies
within the county. Many escaped
Louis Stein's rescue efforts and were destroyed. Further, the largest
collection of Contra Costa County
Superior Court records are on microfilm in custody of the public file room
of the Contra Costa Count
Superior Court, 1111 Court Street, Martinez. The History Center has a copy
of a microfiche index to the
Civil and Probate files still in custody of Superior Court.

Q. Where else are such Contra Costa County case files found?
A. One such collection from Stein is carefully preserved at the Moraga
Historical Society. There are likely
others.

Q. How does one access Contra Costa County probates at the History Center?
A. Currently, there is a listing of the Court Books held here on our web
page. 1,200 probate case files
are also indexed on our web page. This will be updated regularly until all
probates are listed. The balance
can be found in a card index at the History Center. Researchers can visit
the History Center to work with
these files or request a file be copied and mailed to them for a modest fee.


Q. Do we have a collection of San Francisco Probates?
A. No. For questions regarding SF records, please contact Dean McLeod.

Q. Are there fragments from San Francisco County probates at the Contra
Costa County History
Center?
A. Very likely, they were occasionally included when a question involving
someone's San Francisco
estate became an issue in a Contra Costa County lawsuit. There are none in
the 26 pages that we
examined that purportedly came from Bellesiles. . . .



        3)  Melissa Seckora's latest article about this, available at
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment012902.shtml, summarizing
the above.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20020129/dc68207a/attachment.htm