In 2024, the students in Professor Julie Weise’s History class analyzed every Mexican and Mexican American household on the 1930 U.S. manuscript census in Lane County, Oregon. We identified these households via searches in Ancestry.com. 1930 was a unique year in Census history because it was the one and only time that “Mexican” was listed as a race. This made our work easier than it would have otherwise been, because it allowed us to identify Mexican Americans from Arizona, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico as well as Mexican-born individuals. Students collectively entered every household into a shared spreadsheet, then learned simple Excel techniques to analyze the data to answer their research questions about the group as a whole.

Each student then selected an individual, family, or group to research more deeply in Ancestry. It is difficult to piece together the story of a single male worker with a common name such as Juán Flores, because we must remain skeptical that multiple records with that same name were actually from the same person, even if they were born in the same year. Men with more unusual names, those who remained in the Pacific Northwest for longer, and families including women and children were easier to research because we could have much greater confidence that multiple different records were tied to the same person. As a result, women, married men, and those who became more established in the region are overrepresented in the stories we tell here in-depth. Archives always have silences and distortions; this is particularly true of archives that document those who lived on the margins of society. We nonetheless celebrate the work of our students in bringing these 140 Mexicanos into Lane County’s story for the first time.