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Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts

January 16, 2020

Finding Meaning in Alphabet Soup

Kevin asked for help reading and understanding a record

My wife's grandfather Carl Gastone Casattas was born 26 Oct 1894 in San Francisco, California, and died 9 Sept 1970 in Santa Cruz, California.  In between he resided for a long time in Oakland, Alameda, California.

Imagine the surprise when we found the attached Index Card in the Civil War Pension file at NARA.  NARA was surprised too!  They said it did not belong and had no idea what it was doing there.

Can you tell us what is says and what it means?  We can find no record of him having military service.

Kevin - All I could find was this reference to C.A.C. being a Common Access Card, the standard identification for active duty uniformed service personnel, Selected Reserve, DoD civilian employees, and eligible contractor personnel.

I see in the 1930 census that Carl was employed by the US Army as a clerk so I suspect the record above has something to do with that. He no doubt needed an Employee ID Card and that may have been the C.A.C. mentioned in the top record. In 1920 he is listed as clerk working for the Government in the Navy Yard in San Francisco.

I think we've solved your mystery. Carl was a civilian employee in a Government/Military organization and as such needed an ID Card. 


October 14, 2016

Old SF Project Brings 1850 San Francisco to Life

If you have ancestors who lived in San Francisco California, this map is for you. Two developers, Dan Vanderkam and Raven Keller, took old photographs from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection and put them on an interactive map.

Zooming in on a specific location takes you back to as distant as 1850.

Continue reading 2 coders used old photographs to make a mesmerizing Google Street View map of San Francisco in the 1800s or go directly to the Old SF Project and start your tour!