ZUMWALT in parts of

California and Texas

The ZUMWALTs were among the earliest white settlers in Missouri, emigrating there in the late eighteenth century.  Fort ZUMWALT was build in what is now O'Fallon, Missouri, by Jacob ZUMWALT in 1797 for protection from the not-so-peaceful Indians in a time long before citizens would have the army or any military personal loans to protect that area. It is purported to be the first log structure built north of the Missouri River.  From there the ZUMWALTs spread out over the Western United States, being early settlers in Oregon, Texas, New Mexico and California.  Many of the descendants of these early Missouri pioneers still live in the Western States and their trek through the county courthouse records has been followed in a number of books published previously by us, as well as this one.  One of these descendants, Nancy Jane ZUMWALT MOSIER COOK, born 6 June 1832 in Pike County, Missouri, and died 1 January 1899 in Pike County, Missouri, was one of Bill Lee’s Great-Great Grandmothers on his mother’s side of the family.

In 1987 we began traveling from county to county throughout the Western United States, doing research on a number of family names, ZUMWALT among them.  It soon became evident that the names ZUMWALT and ZUMALT were often interchanged for each other, so we quickly expanded the scope of our search to include both names, as well as other similar names.  During the summers of the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s we visited every county courthouse in a number of states and a few county courthouses in some other states, gathering data on the two surnames.  The facts reported in most of our books were gathered from exhaustive searches of county courthouse records and libraries in the titled states.  Books published earlier  in the ZUMWALT/ZUMALT series are ZUMWALT in Oregon, ZUMWALT in Washington, ZUMWALT in the Desert Southwest, ZUMWALT in the West, and a two-part series on Missouri and parts of Illinois.  These books can be found in many libraries and may be purchased directly from us. 

ZUMWALT in parts of California and Texas is the last of our ZUMWALT series of books, as we have exhausted our material and are no longer engaged in on-site courthouse research.  Other books in the series include abstracts of actual courthouse records that we personally viewed at courthouses throughout the Western United States.  This book is a little different.  The on-site courthouse research in this book was performed only in the California counties of Butte, Colusa and Fresno, and the only courthouse visited in Texas was that of Gonzales County.  These four counties contain a wealth of ZUMWALT information, but time constraints did not allow us to do our usual thorough research even in those counties.  A great deal of the information in this book came from the internet.  The Texas marriages are from 1968 to 2003 and were pilfered from http://www.worldvitalrecords.com.  Likewise for Texas divorces and they only include those from 1968 to 2001.  The Texas death records are from 1964 to 1998 and came from http://www.rootsweb.  That was also the source for the California death records that include those from 1940 to 1997.  The California marriage records came from microfiche provided by the California State Health Department  for the years 1961 to 1985.  The information provided on the internet is, at best, only index in nature.  When we could we supplemented the index information from the internet with information from the Social Security Files and also with information from the late Helynn Carrier’s exhaustive work, One ZUMWALT Family, published in 2000.

The book is divided into four main sections.  The first section contains selected articles from local histories and newspapers.  These are copied verbatim and are presented chronologically by date of publication.  A good many family connections and a great deal of family and local history can be found in these articles.  The second section of the book contains cemetery inscriptions.  With the exception of the Colusa City Cemetery and a few Texas cemeteries, this information also came from the internet’s http://www.findagrave.com/. The third section contains information from county records described above.  As mentioned, except for the four counties that we did personally visit, the information came from the internet indices described.  If a county is missing in the book it is because there were apparently no ZUMWALT or ZUMALT recordings in that county for the years described.  Within each county we have presented marriage records first, court records (mostly divorces) next, then probate records, followed by birth records, death records and, in the case of Colusa County, CA, voter registration records.  Each group is in chronological order by date of occurrence or date of recording.  On occasion you will discover the same person married two or more times in the marriage records, then later in the book the person’s divorce in the court records.  Then, still later in the book his or her birth record.  Obviously, the birth occurred first, and the divorce actually happened between the two marriages that appeared earlier, but appears afterward because of our chosen grouping of the records.

The last section in the book is the full-name index.  Our index is, literally, an every-name index, and then some.  Every person in the book is indexed, including both the married name and pre-married name for females.  That is, making the assumption that the time-honored custom of the bride taking the husband’s surname is adhered to.  We have also indexed the maiden and married names of women when both names are obvious.  Some examples:  On page 20 you will find that  Gilbert ZUMALT married Louise SAWDEY.  We have indexed Louise under both ZUMALT and SAWDEY.  On page 21 you will see that Susan Carol ZUMWALT married John Douglas MARSHALL.  We have indexed Susan under both ZUMWALT and MARSHALL.  Susan’s parents were Willis Ray ZUMWALT and Carol Ann ZEDIKER.  Carol Ann is indexed under both ZUMWALT and ZEDIKER.

The ZUMWALTs were among the earliest white settlers in Missouri, emigrating there in the late eighteenth century.  Fort ZUMWALT, built in what is now O’Fallon, Missouri, by Jacob ZUMWALT in 1797 for protection from the not-so-peaceful Indians, is purported to be the first log structure built north of the Missouri River.  From there the ZUMWALTs spread out over the Western United States, being early settlers in Oregon, Texas, New Mexico and California.  Many of the descendants of these early Missouri pioneers still live in the Western States and their trek through the county courthouse records has been followed in a number of books published previously by us, as well as this one.  One of these descendants, Nancy Jane ZUMWALT MOSIER COOK, born 6 June 1832 in Pike County, Missouri, and died 1 January 1899 in Pike County, Missouri, was one of Bill Lee’s Great-Great Grandmothers on his mother’s side of the family.

In 1987 we began traveling from county to county throughout the Western United States, doing research on a number of family names, ZUMWALT among them.  It soon became evident that the names ZUMWALT and ZUMALT were often interchanged for each other, so we quickly expanded the scope of our search to include both names, as well as other similar names.  During the summers of the late 1880s and early to mid 1990s we visited every county courthouse in a number of states and a few county courthouses in some other states, gathering data on the two surnames.  The facts reported in this book were gathered from exhaustive searches of county courthouse records and libraries in the titled states and are described below.  Books published earlier  in the ZUMWALT/ZUMALT series are ZUMWALT in Oregon, ZUMWALT in Washington, ZUMWALT in the Desert Southwest and a two part series on Missouri and parts of Illinois.  These books can be found in many libraries and may be purchased directly from us.  We plan on publishing the results of  more of our research findings from over 800 county courthouses in the Western United States as time permits.

We researched every county courthouse in the states of Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.  If a county is missing in the book from any of these states it is because we did not find any records for the subject names in the missing counties, not because we did not look there.  We did not find a single record for the researched names in the entire state of South Dakota, but we did look there.  Nevada is a paradox.  Even though a very few of the researched families lived there, a good many marriages of these families were married there, and a few were divorced there as well.  The ZUMWALTs from the other states in the book usually lived in the state where the records were recorded.

Time and resources did not allow us to research in every county in the other states included in the book.  The counties researched in those states were: 

Colorado – Baca, Bent, Crowley, Otero and Prowers. 

Iowa – Hamilton, Harrison, Mills and Webster. 

Indiana – Brown, Carroll, Dubois, Elkhart, Fountain, Henry, Huntington, Kosciusko, Lake, Noble, Parke,                  Vermillion, Wabash, Warren, Wayne and Whitley.

     Kansas – Cowley, Harvey, Sedgwick and Sumner. 

     Oklahoma – Alfalfa, Beaver, Cimarron, Craig, Delaware, Grant, Harper, Kay, Mayes, Nowata, Osage, Ottawa,           Rogers, Texas, Tulsa, Washington and Woods. 

As stated earlier, if any of these counties are missing from the book, it is because we did not find any of the subject names there.

The county records we concentrated on most were marriages, civil and criminal court cases, probates, births, deaths and military discharge recordings.  Conspicuously absent from this list are land records.  Even though we recognize the genealogical value of these records, we did not  include land records in our search because of the volume of this type record.  We also did not include court records from any of the lower courts.  Only cases from the Circuit or District courts  are reported.  Records in city courts and lower county courts are too voluminous and contain such things as minor (and some not so minor) traffic violations.  Not only does searching these records take an inordinate amount of time and book space, the maintenance of these records is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another, and often is not even available.  However, the presence of ZUMWALTs and/or ZUMALTs  in a particular area can be determined from the records we have included in the book, and further research in a specific area may be performed if one desires.

The book is divided into three main sections.  The first section contains selected articles from local histories and newspapers (mostly obituaries).  These are copied verbatim, except in a few instances where we felt compelled to correct atrocious grammar (ours isn’t all that great either, but occasionally we had to interfere) or obvious errors in content.  These articles are presented chronologically by date of publication.  A good many family connections and a great deal of family and local history can be found in these articles.  The second section contains abstracts of county records from each county where we did research.  The counties included in this book are shown above.  Once again. if a county from the group indicated is missing it is because we did not find any ZUMWALT or ZUMALT recordings in that county.  Within each county we have presented marriage records first, Circuit Court (or District Court) records (both civil and criminal) next, then probate records, followed by birth records, death records and military discharge recordings.  There are even a couple of Voter Registration Records.  Each group is in chronological order by date of occurrence or date of recording.  On occasion you will discover the same person married two or more times in the marriage records, then later in the book the person’s divorce in the court records.  Then, still later in the book his or her birth record.  Obviously, the birth occurred first, and the divorce actually happened between the two marriages that appeared earlier, but appears afterward because of our chosen grouping of the records.

The last section in the book is the full-name index.  Our index is, literally, an every-name index, and then some.  Every person in the book is indexed, including both the married name and pre-married name for brides.  That is, making the assumption that the time-honored custom of the bride taking the husband’s surname is adhered to.  We have also indexed the maiden and married names of women when both names are obvious.  Some examples:  On page 27 you will find that Jon Raymond ZUMALT married Nancy Jean TRUE.  We have indexed Nancy under both ZUMALT and TRUE.  On page 46 you will see that Janet Elaine ZUMWALT married Ronald Dale YARBROUGH.  We have indexed Janet under both ZUMWALT and YARBROUGH.  Janet’s parents were Doyle ZUMWALT and Mary JORDAN.  Mary is indexed under both ZUMWALT and JORDAN.

A few words need to be said about research at county courthouses.  First, the quality and content of county records vary widely from one jurisdiction to another, and also over time.  The early records are usually very brief – for example, early marriages might only show a bride, a groom and who married them.  Later marriages would list more genealogical data such as date and place of birth, occupation and parents names.  On jurisdictional differences, in general, Nevada marriage records contained a great deal more data at an early date than Idaho records.  In all cases, we have attempted to report all the available information we were able to locate.

Secondly, on the subject of doing research in county courthouses, a researcher is totally at the mercy of the personnel working in the various courthouses.  Some counties have personnel who are both knowledgeable and helpful, while other counties have clerks who are neither.  Thankfully, the norm is usually the former.  We have been in courthouses that were so enjoyable that we hated to leave, and others where we were sorry we ever went.  On a few instances we were denied access to records,  sometimes for valid legal reasons, other times because of a misinterpretation of a law or clerk indifference, and occasionally because the record in question could not be found.  These are indicated in the book.  The bottom line is that research in county courthouses is an adventure, and this adventure is reflected in the contents of this book.

While on the subject of researching county records, or research of any kind for that matter, quite often the records are handwritten, and not always easy to decipher.  We have tried to translate these various attempts at penmanship the best that we can, but can assure you that we have been far from 100% accurate in this undertaking.  It is also worth mentioning that the same name will quite often appear differently on the same document – both on handwritten and printed documents for that matter.  ZUMWALT and ZUMALT is a prime example of this.  At all times we have done the best we could in deciphering and reporting what we have seen.

The source material in courthouse records is sometimes in error, and other times difficult to interpret.  There is also the case where we have introduced errors in the transcription of the data, though we have made every attempt to minimize this type error.  Some of the records list a great deal of useful information, others hardly any.  We have attempted to report all the information contained in the original records.  Some of the court records are subject to individual interpretation.  We are not attorneys, and have attempted to only summarize the content of the court cases.  Any person interested in more detail on these cases may find the case files available to the public at the indicated county by requesting the indicated case number.