The Finley-McFarling Genealogy Collection contains over 700 citations to documents involving early Finley families in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Texas and California along with a number of collateral lines. These documents, all in transcribed form and many with copies of the original documents, include deeds, court records, tax and census records, marriage and other vital records, as well as some extensive probate records, and abstracts taken from standard sources, correspondence, and other family history documentation.

Carmen J. Finley, PhD., C.G., is a retired research psychologist. Her interest in genealogy began in 1979 and she started publishing articles in 1988, her first being in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Since then she has published additional articles in the NGS Quarterly as well as in The Virginia Genealogist, the American Genealogist and Tennessee Ancestors. She is the author of The Finleys of Early Sonoma County, California, published by Heritage Books, Inc., Bowie, Maryland, in 1997. She has been chairman of the NGS Family History Contest since 1990, for which she recently received the NGS Distinguished Service Award. She is especially interested in methodology as it applies to the study of family history. In 1998 she and the Sonoma State University Library jointly received the GENTECH Applied Technology award for outstanding contributions to technological and genealogical quality, based on the development of her database of the Finley family collection. She is a native of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and the fourth generation of her family to live in Sonoma County.

9 linear feet; 10 boxes

The library can only claim physical ownership of the collection. Users are responsible for satisfying any claimants of literary property

Collection is open for research by appointment.