The Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library was formally incorporated in 1967, but our archival history has deep roots.

 

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Leonardo Barbieri (Italian, b. c.1810 – 1873), "Fr. José María de Jesús González Rubio" (1850); Oil on canvas Funded and donated by fifty-four Santa Bárbara individuals or families, 1850,

Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M., historical photo, ca. 1900, recently colorized;

Fr. Maynard Geiger, O.F.M. in the archive-library, ca. 1960s. 

Fr. Maynard Geiger, O.F.M (third from left) with Franciscans, and (left) with his mother. ca. 1920s.

All from the Collection of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library.

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1808

Estevan Tapis, OFM, then the President of the California Missions, petitioned his superiors at San Fernando College in Mexico that the books held by friars in California who died in California remain in California.

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1831

Narciso Durán, OFM, was appointed President of the Alta California Missions and Mission Santa Barbara became the headquarters of the mission chain.

 

1833

Mission Santa Barbara had become the central depository for all the Franciscan documents created and books acquired in Alta California from 1769 forward.

 

1837

José María de Jesús González Rubio, OFM, was named President of the Alta California Missions.

 

1842

González Rubio took up a post as vicar of the recently-appointed Bishop Francisco García Diego y Moreno.

 

1845

The Mexican government proclaimed its intentions to sell or lease the lands surrounding the Missions in California.  Nicholas Den and Daniel Hill leased all Mission Santa Barbara’s buildings except the Church and friary and allowed the Franciscans to stay.

 

1846

Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno died on 30 April 1846, just before the Bear Flag Republic was declared in June, leading to the annexation of California by the United States in 1847.  Meanwhile, González Rubio at Mission Santa Barbara administered the Catholic Church in both Alta and Baja California from the death of Bishop Garcia Diego until the arrival of Bishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany in 1850.

 

1875

González Rubio served as head of the Mission until a few months before his death on November 2, 1875, and was largely responsible for seeing to it that the archival materials and the library books at the Mission were kept safe.

 

1854-1877

On the 23rd of July 1854, the four remaining friars at Mission Santa Barbara – the last four friars in Alta California – were officially established as the Apostolic College of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Apostolic College then became the repository for all of the old mission books.  The establishment and  operation of the Colegio San Francisco, a boys high school/junior college by the Apostolic College from 1868 until 1877 led to the library at Mission Santa Barbara increasing in size, as well as to the acquisition of at least one “unexpected” text for a historical/theological library, The Game of Base Ball (sic – “baseball” had not yet become a single word) by Henry Chadwick, the first book written on how to learn, teach, and play the game, purchased in the 1860s for the grand sum of twenty-five cents.

 

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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“The game of base ball. How to learn it, how to play it, and how to teach it. With sketches of noted players” by Henry Chadwick, 1868;

GV 863 A1 C43 Rare Book Collection of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library

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1877-1900

By 1877, the archives and library at Mission Santa Barbara were already known as a treasure trove.  Hubert Howe Bancroft had begun his prodigious hunt for materials related to western history and sent an assistant to collect or transcribe materials from the Mission for his growing collection, which would eventually become the Bancroft Library of the University of California.

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Mission Santa Barbara by Carlton Watkins (1871).; Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M., ca. 1900; Library at Santa Barbara Mission, ca. 1900s;

Collection of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library.  

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1900-1934

By the early 1900s, Mission Santa Barbara had been incorporated into the Franciscan Province of the Sacred Heart, of Saint Louis, Missouri and the noted historian Zephyrin Engelhardt, OFM, followed in the footsteps of friars Joseph Jeremiah O’Keefe, OFM, and Theodore Arentz, OFM, in maintaining the archives.  Engelhardt also collected materials about the Missions from every source that he could find, including copying documents in other archives and keeping the copies safe at the Mission until his death in 1934.

 

1937

After three years in which the Archives went unattended by the friars, Maynard Geiger, OFM, with a freshly earned PhD in history, succeeded Engelhardt and became archivist on June 3rd, 1937.  He continued the collection of archival records and scholarly materials as well as producing an enormous amount of historical writing himself using material from the Archive-Library. 

At the time, the Archive-Library materials were stored in small rooms on the cloistered residential second floor area of the Old Mission friary adjacent to the Mission itself.  This location made it difficult to procure lay assistance to organize the archive and library materials.  Elizabeth Hegemann of New Mexico, longing to provide greater access to the materials for scholars and especially for women who were not allowed in the cloistered areas, donated $300,000 to start a campaign to build a new building to house the archives.  Rosario Curletti of Santa Barbara, joined the effort and donated over a million dollars during her lifetime and in her will, as well as raising a great deal of money from others to see to the building and operation of the Archive-Library as it now exists.

 

1967

The Franciscan Province of Saint Barbara, with the urging and assistance of interested lay people, incorporated the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library, Inc. to use the funds from this capital campaign to properly house the Archive-Library collections.  The corporation was deliberately delineated as a public “literary, charitable, educational” organization to reflect the most basic purpose of the Archive-Library: the scientific, objective study of the history of the Mission era in California, rather than seeking religious conversion. Proclaiming the Gospel had been the big “Why” for the existence of the Missions, but the Archive-Library would be and still is all about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of the Missions.

 

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​[Left-Right] Groundbreaking participants on July 2, 1967 included: Fr. Virgil Cordano, O.F.M., Guardian of Old Mission Santa Bárbara (back to camera); Rev. Ozias B. Cook, Pastor of Mt. Carmel Church (third from left); Fr. Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., Archivist and Historian of SBMAL (with shovel); and Fr. William Tobin, S.J., Pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Church (right).; Additional photos from summer 1967, names unknown. Photo Collection of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library.

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1968

The Archive-Library wing attached to the west end of the Old Mission was dedicated in the fall of 1968.

 

1977

Maynard Geiger continued to serve as Archivist until the day of his death on May 13, 1977.

 

1977-2004

After interim service by lay board member Bogden Deresiewisc, Francis Guest, OFM, was named Archivist and continued in that position for a number of years, while Virgilio Biasol, OFM, joined him as Director in 1979.  Pat Livingstone managed the Archive-Library in Fr. Virigilio’s last years. Many, many volunteers, as well as prominent lay historians Doyce Nunis and Norman Neuerburg, contributed time and treasure to the Archive-Library.

 

2005-2022

Lynn Bremer and Dr. Mónica Orozco served as the first lay Executive Directors of the Archive-Library.

 

2022

The office of Trustee of the SBMAL, Inc, which had been held by the Provincial Definitorium of Saint Barbara Province from the time of the Archive-Library’s incorporation was transferred by the Definitorium to Franciscan Ministries, Inc.

Jack Clark Robinson, OFM, assumed the role of Executive Director.

 

2025

John Gherini, Esq., who had served over thirty years on the Board, including many years as its chair, retired and was succeeded as chair, by Dr. John R. Johnson, emeritus curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

 

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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Current photos of the archive-library, 2026.

 

​​Material in this historical sketch is drawn from:
1) Maynard Geiger, “The Old Mission Libraries of California” in California Library Bulletin, June 1950.

2) Address of Maynard J. Geiger to Westerners, Mission Santa Barbara, 7 Feb. 1974 and a brochure distributed at that talk.

3) The Provincial Annals of Saint Barbara Province (XVI, October 1953).
4) Colin H McIsaac, revised by Augustine Hobrecht, OFM, A History of Santa Barbara Mission from the Founding 1786 to the Earthquake 1925, Schauer Printing Studio, Santa Barbara 1926.

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