Vol. I · No. 1 Berkeley, California MMXXVI

Aodhan Coyne

Early California History · Archives, Registers, Maps

I rebuild the archival record of early California as open, citable data. The core of the work is the Archives of California, the Savage transcripts at the Bancroft Library, the only surviving copy of the province's government archive after 1906.

The Projects
Savage transcript leaf, 1778
Bando of Teodoro de Croix, 22 March 1778. C–A 1.
No. I

Archives of California

A documentary calendar of the Savage transcripts

Volume by volume, each entry keyed to its manuscript leaf, with both page systems recorded and every document linked to the scan it was read from.

34,899 documents · 63 volumes
The north-south civil conflicts of Mexican California in five snapshot panels
North against South: five civil conflicts in five snapshots — one of the five charts.
No. II

How California Was Governed

Five charts of the political system, 1697–1854

The chain of command from Crown to neophyte, the division of 1804, the Mexican system, the five north–south civil wars, and the capitals in law against the capitals in fact. Every box and bar is cited to a record of the archive.

5 charts · every claim sourced
The land grants mapped and coloured by governor
The register mapped: 535 grants, coloured by the governor who made each.
No. III

Ranchos de Alta California

A register of the land grants

Every grant and claim, mapped where a surveyed boundary survives, with the diseños, the grantee dynasties and the registered cattle brands.

672 grants · 535 mapped
Registered California cattle brands
Registered brands, 1822–1859.
Specimen

The Brands

Marks of ownership, recorded in the county books

Each rancho registered its hierro. The marks survive in the brand books where the boundaries did not.

The imperial frontier of San Francisco Bay in pictorial symbols: ships at their anchorages, presidio, missions
The Bay Area imperial frontier: every ship at its anchorage, every establishment in its symbol.
No. IV

California History Maps

Interactive cartography of the archival record

Expeditions, engagements and imperial contests reconstructed point by point. Every pin carries its source; uncertain locations are drawn so you can see the uncertainty.

13 maps · 1,380+ features · pictorial symbols
From the Archive
Vessel traffic to the Californias by flag, 1769 to 1846
Traffic by flag, 1769–1846, from the registry itself.
No. V

California Ship Registry

Documented vessel visits to the Californias

Each visit cited to the archival or published source it rests on, with flags, anchorages and outcomes. Currently a draft release.

2,072 visits · 400 vessels
Alcalde Books
No. VI

Alcalde Books

Californian & Western Americana

A curated shop of history and rare books, selected and described by a trained historian.

Published Datasets
I. Coyne, Aodhan. Archives of California: A Documentary Calendar of the Savage Transcripts (BANC MSS C-A). Version 1.1.0. Zenodo, 13 August 2026.
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21327098
II. Coyne, Aodhan. Ranchos of California: A Register of the Land Grants of Alta California. Version 1.0.0. Zenodo, 31 August 2026.
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22185500
III. Coyne, Aodhan. California Ship Registry, 1769–1846: A Documentary Register of Vessel Visits to the Californias. Zenodo, 26 August 2026.
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22105908
Writing

In preparation.

The Author

Aodhan Coyne

I work on the history of early California, from 1769 to the American conquest, and on making the archives of that period usable. My principal project is Archives of California, a document-level calendar of the Savage transcripts at the Bancroft Library, the copies that remain after the originals were destroyed in 1906. I am extending it beyond Savage to the other nineteenth-century compilers who worked from the same records, among them Hittell and Eldredge, and cross-referencing it with the pueblo archives of San José and Los Angeles, with further collections to follow. The aim is a cross-archive index of early California, one that lets a person or a document be followed across collections. Alongside it I maintain a register of the Spanish and Mexican land grants, a registry of ship arrivals to the Californias, and a series of historical maps. All of it is published openly and added to continually. B.A. in History, University of California, Berkeley (2025).

ORCID 0009-0002-8630-3768

ORCID 0009-0002-8630-3768  ·  GitHub  ·  aodhancoyne@gmail.com
Datasets CC BY 4.0, code MIT. Corrections welcome and logged in each project's errata. ❧