Murder on Willow Slough: Tracing Family Ties Using the County Archives by Jim Lapsley and Heather Lanctot (In-Person)

Learn about genealogical research tools while discovering why Albert Merritt shot and killed his neighbor Jacob Ryherd, in the prairie between what is now Davis and Woodland on October 15, 1860.

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Using the murder as a case study, Jim and Heather will review historical documents from the Yolo County Archives and the Internet to understand the cause(s) and context of the murder. The documents include court records, county and General Land Office maps, tax rolls, census data, state and federal land sales, marriage and death records, real estate deeds and transfers, and local newspapers. County histories, which generally contain biographies of prominent citizens, will also be discussed.

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Jim Lapsley is a second-generation Californian who received his Ph.D. in American Agricultural History from UC Davis. He and his wife have lived in Woodland for 53 years. He is writing a biography of R.B. Blowers, the first successful raisin producer in California and an early advocate of irrigation and specialty crop production. Blowers settled in the Willow Slough area of Yolo County in 1854, and Jim’s interest
in the 1860 killing is an offshoot of his research on Blowers and other early settlers.

Heather Lanctot has an M.A. in Musicology from University of Oregon and a master’s in library and information science from San Jose State. She has been working in academic, medical, and public libraries and archives since 2010. Over the nine years that she has worked for Yolo County she has strived to increase collection reservation and access by helping facilitate a 2-million-dollar renovation, advocating for and implementing an online database and digitization program, overseeing the processing of 328 collections and digitization of close to 15,000 collection items.

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Join us in-person at the Davis Senior Center (646 A St., Davis), or via Zoom (email us at president@davisgenealogy.org to request a guest pass). Refreshments are provided by the club; more are always welcome!

The Davis Genealogy Club Library will be open on meeting day from 12:00-1:00pm-Swing by and check it out! Club volunteers are also in the Library every Wednesday between 1:00 and 3:30, ready to help.