1884 Great Register

The 1884 Great Register of Voters for Los Angeles County California contains 6,963 records of persons who lived in “The Country”.  At that time, “The Country” was defined as any place in the county other than in the City of Los Angeles.  In 1884, Los Angeles County included present day L.A. County plus the area that is now known as Orange County.

The registers were the result of California’s Registry Act of 1866 in which all voters were required to register.  Why were only males listed?  Because only men were allowed to vote in 1884.  (Women were finally allowed to vote as a result of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.)

In addition to name, age, place of birth, occupation and place of residence, the registers provide naturalization information in sufficient detail to show the date of naturalization and the court conferring the naturalization.

Our library presently has microfilms of the biannually printed Great Registers for the period 1873 through 1896.  If you are performing research in Los Angeles County for that time period, perhaps a visit to our library to peruse the registers would help!

We would like to say a special “Thank you” to Donald Chaput, curator emeritus, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, for his assistance in our Great Register project.  The Museum’s Seaver Center originals and printed copies for some of the Great Registers of Los Angeles County.

This 1884 Great Register database is searchable by either first name, last name, and place of birth or a combination of the three. It is a "begins with" search. If you search for the last name Mill, it will return the names begining with the letters Mill. (ie. Millan, Millard, Miller)

If you would like to search within a field you will need to add a % sign to the beginning of the search.

example: If you search for %carolina it will bring back a result of

If you would like some more information regarding one of the listings click here.