As I sorted through a pile of paperwork that dated back to the 1700s, I couldn’t help but wonder where the single piece of information that I was so diligently searching for could be located. The search was so challenging that I started to think I would only find this information when I was searching for something else entirely; although I have only been working as a A&SC student research assistant since the beginning of fall quarter, I’ve learned that the answer to one research inquiry can sometimes only be answered once one is searching in the vault for materials on a totally different topic.

My charge was pinpointing the unequivocal date the Mission Church acquired the crucifix that came to be known as the Catalá Cucifix. A researcher had posed this question to my boss via email, and my boss had then passed the question onto me with the original text of the email. Contained therein, my first clue was a scan from the book Situating Mission Santa Clara de Asís, 1776-1851 : documentary and material evidence of life on the alta California frontier : a timeline, which contained a photo of the crucifix. The footnote under the photo reads, “the ‘so called Catalá crucifix,’ purchased in 1803.” However, this was complicated by the researcher referencing a sign on SCU’s campus that states that the crucifix was “from the year 1802.” With the hopes to determine the exact year in which the cross was obtained, I dove into the Mission Manuscripts Collection, and was once again amazed by the vast amount of information on hand.

The first box that I searched through possessed accounts from the “Colegio de San Fernando and Alta California Manuscripts,” which contained a detailed inventory list of materials sent to Mission Santa Clara from Mexico. The inventory list was in Colonial Spanish; therefore, I attempted to find keywords such as “cruz” (the Spanish word for cross) to identify the Catala crucifix on the inventory list. This search was unsuccessful.

Next, I searched through box 16 of the Mission Manuscript Collection, which had a list of detailed inventory of the Mission Church from 1777-1823. Luckily, this list had been translated into English in the 1980s. As I read through this inventory, I was especially careful when I got to the years 1802-1803. Still I was not able to identify a mention of the crucifix.

Although unfortunate in that I was not able to deliver an answer, the process by which I conducted this research enriched my knowledge of the archival research methods: attention to detail and precision play a large role in my job as a research assistant. The experience also endowed within me a new appreciation for the detailed accounts of Mission Church inventory, as well as the Mission’s humble beginnings. I find the research process endlessly fascinating when there is a multitude of sources of information to inspect, and I hope to eventually uncover the answer to this question; ironically, this will probably happen while I’m in the vault, searching for the answer to an different research question.