California joined the union as the 31st state in September 1850. At one point in our research, most of us will eventually be looking for an ancestor in this beautiful state. Many immigrants settled in California making it a very cultural state. The California state web page has the following information regarding California’s diversity:

“In demographic terms, the salient feature of California is its diversity. One out of every four Californians has been born outside the United States. Into California has come the human, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural richness of the planet itself. There is no people, no race, no cultural or linguistic tradition that is not in some way represented in California. In certain cases, in fact, California represents a major instance of a cultural tradition. There are more than a million Chinese-American Californians and a million and more Filipino-Americans. Los Angeles alone is one of the largest Mexican cities on the planet. The state also sustains major populations of Iranian, Armenian, Asian-Indian, Vietnamese, and other populations, the vast majority of them first-generation immigrants.”

“This diversity is at once the result of the reform of American immigration law in the mid-1960s and subsequent adjustments by the United States Congress. But it is also the fulfillment of a pattern, a DNA code, that goes back to Native American California. In the generations before European contact, fully a third of the Native Americans living within the present-day boundaries of the United States were living within the present-day boundaries of California. They were grouped into some seventy linguistic strains and cultural traditions. So, too, did Spain and Mexico continue this tradition of ethnic diversity. The Hispanic founders of California in both the Spanish and the Mexican eras extending from 1769 to 1848 included diverse strains of European, African, Native American, and mixed populations. The Gold Rush that began in earnest in 1849 brought to California a world community: Anglo- and African-Americans from the Atlantic states, Chileans, Mexicans, Chinese, French, English, German, Irish and Australian, Hawaiian Islanders, Filipinos, and other groups. While this polyglot population existed under an Anglo-American hegemony, it nevertheless foreshadowed the demographic destiny of the American state that the Gold Rush had jump-started into existence.”

California has a wealth of genealogical information available to researchers. Below are some links that I hope will help you in this endeavor:

Welcome to California site: http://www.ca.gov/state/portal/myca_homepage.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1223634773.1159752676@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccciaddilgfmihecfngcfkmdffidfnf.0

CA GenWeb: http://www.cagenweb.com/

Cemeteries of CA: http://www.interment.net/us/ca/index.htm

California Genealogy: http://www.californiagenealogy.org/

Ca Vital Records: http://vitalrec.com/ca.html

CA Historical Society: http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/

CA Genealogy Queries: http://www.cousinconnect.com/p/a/1005/

CA Genforum: http://genforum.genealogy.com/ca/

CA Genealogy Today: http://www.genealogytoday.com/genealogy/states/california.html

Cyndi’s List for CA: http://www.cyndislist.com/ca.htm

CA Genealogy Mine: http://home.ptd.net/~NIKKI/CA.htm

CA Genealinks: http://www.genealinks.com/states/ca.htm

CA Births 1905-1995: http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/calbirths

CA Deaths 1940-1997: http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/caldeaths

California Obituary Links: http://www.obitlinkspage.com/obit/ca.htm