Index to Militia Lists of Sonoma County, 1846 to 1900 

In 1872, Section 1895 of the Political Code of California¹ directed the county assessor to collect enrollment information for military service. This book contains over 39,000 records in a combined alphabetical list created from these official lists for the years 1878, 1888, 1890, 1892, 1894, and 1900.

In addition, the archives of Sonoma County contain fragmentary lists for 1846, 1857, 1862, 1863, 1865 and 1903. California did not become a state until 1850, and the list for 1846 was for a militia based in Sonoma, then the head of the Republic of California, a short-lived entity before California became a state.

The 1846 and 1857 lists are included in the overall alphabetical list, which provides surname, given name, township and year in an easy-to-read columnar format. The other years, 1862, 1863, 1865 and 1903 are listed separately because they contain additional information including rank and date commissioned in some cases.

^{1 James H. Deering, editor, The Political Code of the State of California, as enacted in 1872, and amended up to and including 1905 …( San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1906), 426; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/codeofstateofcal00cali : accessed Sep 2018).}

Militia Lists of Sonoma County, California 1846 to 1900  is available for research at the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library (the Annex).