California Genealogical Society blog: Our Library Collections: South Dakota

Hand-drawn map of Fort Randall in
South Dakota

One in a series by CGS member Chris Pattillo highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in Oakland. For a fuller listing of books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog in WorldCat.

Our South Dakota books begin with six volumes of South Dakota by the Department of History Collections in Brule County. Chapter One is a history of Brule County. That is followed by chapters on individuals and a variety of topics. Volume 23 published in 1947 has chapters on Ferries on the Big Sioux River, Hand County, and Newspapers of South Dakota. Each chapter is long – for example, the chapter on Father Christian Hoecken is forty pages, so unlike some of the autobiographical sketches our collection holds, these are quite substantive. These books are really packed with a lot of genealogical information and are something anyone with South Dakota roots needs to look at.

These five volumes are Dakota Territory and South Dakota

We have five dense volumes titled History of Dakota Territory by George W. Kingsbury, each with a San Francisco D.A.R. bookplate. They were published in 1915. The table of contents, 19 pages long is somewhat unique in that for each chapter there is a brief summary of the contents of the chapter. This set of books provides an excellent history of the state and is very well illustrated so is another tremendous resource.

We have a nice set of four books that were compiled by Ronald Vern Jackson. The set includes the 1860, 1870 and 1880 censuses plus the 1880 Mortality Schedule.

This centennial book includes articles
written by multiple authors

Our hard copy book collection includes a few books focused on specific counties in South Dakota. One of these is Lawrence County Dakota Territory Centennial, 1861–1961 by Mildred Fielder. It contains a series of articles written by different authors on a range of topics such as mining, dairying, lumbering, transportation, education, churches, sports and more.

Historical Collections from Deuel County follows the format of many of our bicentennial books. It provides a history of the county followed by short bios for many individuals in chronological order. This particular book is very well illustrated. At the beginning of the book they included individual plot maps for each township with the names of original landowners. These are clear and easier to read.