Santa Barbara Mission: A Treasure-Trove of History : Library: Researchers comb through the archives of church and government records that date back to 1769.

Each year, hundreds of filmmakers, historians, authors and scholars--virtually anyone doing serious research on what California was like before it became a state--wind up at the Santa Barbara Mission.

They come from all over America and beyond to pore through archives that contain the records of the 21 California missions and the official communications of the Spaniards and Mexicans who administered California until statehood in 1850.

Thousands of letters between the Franciscan friars who ran the missions are here. So are thousands of pages of beautifully chirographed documents and more than 3,000 books published before 1850, many brought by friars when they were assigned to the missions.

Among the books is a Spanish Bible published in 1493. Original maps of California printed in the late 1700s and early 1800s are here, along with the largest collection of music books dating to the mission period.

“The archives are a tremendous California treasure with many riches yet to be tapped,” said Father Virgilio Biasiol, 73, the mission’s archivist-librarian since 1979. “Buried in the documents, books, letters and papers is information about so many things, much of which remains to be researched.”

The materials are stored in the mission’s archive library, built a quarter-century ago and open by appointment Tuesday through Saturday.

Biasiol said researchers come primarily for church and government records that date back to 1769, the year of the founding of California’s first mission at San Diego.

He said he receives inquiries from Europe, South America, Australia and Japan.

Earlier this year, two Soviet scholars journeyed to Santa Barbara from Moscow to do research on the Russian settlement at Ft. Ross in Northern California. They discovered in going through old records that Russian soldiers were involved in the Chumash Indian revolt against Santa Barbara Mission in 1824.

Last July, a group of 25 university professors from Spain, who came here for a symposium on the missions, stayed to do research in the Santa Barbara Mission archives.

The archive-library is also the repository of documents supporting the 50-year effort to elevate to sainthood Father Junipero Serra, known as the “Apostle of California” and founding president of the missions.

Biasiol reached into a file cabinet in a temperature-controlled vault and pulled out a letter written by Serra on April 29, 1792, describing the dedication of the Santa Barbara presidio chapel “in the land of Yamnonalit,” a reference to the chief of the Siujtu, the Chumash Indian village which is now the city of Santa Barbara.

It is one of more than 100 letters written by Serra in the archives.

The 205-year-old mission, one of the most frequently visited places in California, was founded in 1796 but not finished until 1833, when the mission’s second tower was completed. Three flags have flown over it: first the Spanish, then the Mexican and finally the United States.

Biasiol said Father Narciso Duran, the mission’s first archivist, ordered in 1844 that records from all 21 missions be kept at the Santa Barbara Mission.

Father Zephyran Engelhardt, who from 1903 to 1933 wrote the history of the California missions, was another prominent archivist here, as was Father Maynard Geiger, archivist here from 1933 to 1977.

Geiger, author of “Mission Santa Barbara 1782-1965,” spent much of his time as an archivist in Mexico, Spain and Vatican City collecting thousands of documents and books pertaining to the missions in California history.

Biasiol, who was born in Pula, Italy, and ordained a Franciscan friar 50 years ago in Venice, came to the United States in 1948. He was assigned to Santa Barbara Mission and served at San Luis Rey Mission before returning to Santa Barbara.

He is attempting to index the documents in a fashion that would astound the men who wrote them.

“Six months ago we began the computerization of the archives.”