Frequently Asked Questions

The Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County offers a research service, provided by qualified volunteers, to find information on your ancestor who lived in Santa Cruz County. We will search our own holdings and those of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries for you.

To obtain this research assistance a modest charge of $15 gets the ball rolling. It entitles you to an initial evaluation, and one hour of research time. Many requests can be answered in this time. If more time is required to complete the task or if new opportunities for further research are turned up, we will furnish a report outlining a research plan with an estimate of any additional costs.

Information on what to provide and how to send it to the Research Coordinator, are provided on this Research Assistance Form.

We have access to area newspapers on microfilm, including the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Surf and the Evening News. We have local cemetery listings, plus county voter records and county vital statistics. We have city directories dating from the early 1900s. Many of these resources have been indexed, and these indexes are available in the Genealogy Library.

The Santa Cruz Public Libraries also has available online an index to some of the earliest local newspapers, including the Santa Cruz Surf (1883-1900), Pacific Sentinel and Santa Cruz Sentinel (1856-1884), and Mountain Echo (1896-1916).