The Oregon State Archives has a new database devoted to people who lived in Oregon prior to its statehood — the Early Oregonians Database, available at http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/news/eo/eo (that’s actually a gateway URL, but the actual site/search URL is messy.)

This site contains about 105,000 entries, pulling information from census death, probate, and other records. Essentially the people outlined in the database lived in Oregon from 1800 to 1860, but there are gaps for Native Americans and those of multiracial descent.

The basic search page lets you search only by name, year span, and county, but there are additional search options will let you expand the number of names you’re searching for around that person. I did a search for John Smith . I got 130 results arranged in a table. The table has a space for name, date and place of birth, date and place of death, and father and mother’s name. For this search most of the spaces were empty.

Each person has their own page too. I chose a John Smith that had both a listed birth and death date. His profile page that contained details including information on associated records, names of associated people (in this case, his wife) and census record associations if available. Just like the search results, not all information represented by the tabs are available for all people.

This site is considered to be a work in progress and will be refined and updated over time. Project volunteers at the moment are going through the Native American censuses taken on reservations between 1885 and 1940, and material extracted from that work will be added to the database as well.