User:Laurenwake/SandboxPortUnion

The Portuguese Union of the State of California (Uniao Portugueza do Estado da California), abbreviated as UPEC, was a fraternal association founded 1 August 1880 in San Leandro, CA. While all the founding members were Portuguese (all but one were from the Azores), enrollment was open to anyone interested in Portuguese culture.

UPEC funded cultural activities, college scholarships, and the J.A. Freitas Library, the most complete library of books and periodicals related to Portuguese in the USA. The organization also provided life insurance to its members.

In 2010, UPEC was merged with several other Portuguese fraternal societies to form the Portuguese Society of America.

UPEC created two record sets of particular interest to genealogists. Those are the death claim registers, created when a member of the society died and membership records, created when an individual joined the society.

Death Claim Registers
Death Claim Registers were created when a member of the society died. The record typically provided the individual's name, death date, the name of the beneficiary of their life insurance, and the date and place (chapter number) of admission into the union.

The death claim registers have been indexed and are available on Ancestry. A subscription is required to view the records. The records are part of a collection that includes a variety of records from the counties of Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Fresno, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, Sutter, and Yolo as well as the death claim registers. The images of the death claim registers are available on FamilySearch, but have not been indexed.
 * California, Death and Burial Records from Select Counties, 1873-1987 at Ancestry.com. Index and Images. ($).
 * Death claim registers, 1880-1979 at FamilySearch.org. Images only.

After you have located the death register, you can use the the information on the date the individual joined UPEC as well as the chapter number where they joined to locate their membership record.

Membership Records
Membership Records were created when an individual joined the society. The record typically provided the individual's name, age, marital status, occupation, residence, place of birth (usually the district in Portugal or the name of the Island in the Azores), and the name of the beneficiary of their life insurance.

The memberships records have been digitized by FamilySearch, but have not been indexed. Consult the following table to identify which microfilm records contain the membership record for the chapter where an individual joined the union.

Some towns had several chapters, and other times the information on chapter members was recorded in multiple books. When searching in a chapter that has multiple records for a specific date, attempt to locate the individual in each collection. Different information may have been recorded in the different copies of the membership records.