The San Mateo County Genealogical Society's Library is located at 125 Lessingia Court, San Mateo, CA 94002 (aka 25 Tower Road, San Mateo, CA). It is open with volunteer assistance provided from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on these days:
What began as a few books in a cardboard box has grown to more than 5500 titles providing genealogical and historical information on all areas of the United States and many foreign countries. The collection includes books, periodicals, maps, pamphlets, microfilm, microfiche and CDs. The main collection is arranged by the Dewey Decimal System, and a computerized catalog is available allowing searches by title, author and subject.
The collection grows daily through purchases, donations and donor subscriptions. Some of the highlights of the Collections are:
- The Schellens Collection -- A 180 + volume scrapbook of people and places, covering every county of California. Our in-house collection covers over sixty volumes of San Mateo County and sixty volumes of San Francisco County.
- The Obituary Collection -- Obituaries from San Mateo County - Newspapers - Indexed.
- California Death Index/Marriage Index -- Assorted years - on microfiche.
- The Barbour Collection of Vital Records from Connecticut Towns -- complete.
- Daughters of the American Revolution and New England Historical and Genealogical Society records.
- All of Filby's Passenger Lists
- The CD Club Collection - Over 800 titles covering the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Europe, Middle America, including the 1880/1881 US, Canadian and British census records.
Richard Schellens, one of the founding members of the Redwood City Archives Committee, was an accountant by trade and a historian by obsession. His love of the history of San Mateo County and San Francisco has left us with a collection of abstractions that have been organized into binders by the Redwood City Archives Committee. The originals of these volumes, which cover the whole county rather than just Redwood City, are housed in the Redwood City Main Library History Room.
The San Mateo County Genealogical Society has a complete set of the 53 San Mateo County volumes, the 60+ other county collection, and is in the process of copying the entire San Francisco collection.
Schellens gathered not only current day information, but he systematically went back through old directories, county histories, great registers, county record books and newspapers, extracting, abstracting, photocopying and indexing the lives of the residents of San Mateo County.
Three volumes of Redwood City real estate transactions include hand drawn maps and references to the deeds in the San Mateo County Official Record books. More than 50 books hold records of Redwood City residents sorted by the main surname of the record. Other volumes are sorted by township, with both current and no longer existent townships being covered.
The main limitation of this work was the lack of an index. This is being rectified by SMCGS in cooperation with societies throughout the state. Currently over one fourth of the volumes are indexed resulting in more than 100,000 entries.
While the Schellens Collection would seldom be considered as an end source, although there are photocopies of some newspaper items with sufficient documentation, it is a wonderful finding aid for records of tens of thousands of San Mateo County Residents. It should be a first stop for anyone researching ancestors in the county.
A Place index to the Schellen's collection is available from San Mateo County Genealogical Society. (See SMCGS Publications For Sale)