NEWBERRY - BRING BACK THE INTERACTIVE MAP

If you use the interactive county map at the Newberry Library website, this is an important message from the Legal Genealogist.

Quoting from her BLOG:
 
"As you can see, right now, if you go to the Newberry Library website and go to the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries page, you get a message right at the top.
One that makes my heart stop dead in its tracks.

Please note: the interactive map portion of this site is temporarily unavailable.

And, underneath that, a box for data entry with the comment “Enter email address to receive notification when this functionality has been restored.”
Now any time you see a message like this, you know that the most likely situation is that there’s some sort of technical glitch that will take some serious resources to fix… and that those serious resources won’t be committed unless and until the site has evidence that the missing functionality is important to the site’s users.
In other words, if we don’t tell the Newberry Library that we really really want and need this functionality back, we may well lose it forever.
So you know what we need to do, right?
You got it: head right over to the Newberry Library website, to the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries page, and add your email address to the list of those that need to be notified “when this functionality has been restored.”"

Happy ancestor hunting.

Genealogy's Star: Explore new territory in the Google Maps Gallery

I absolutely love to work with maps when doing genealogy research. There is so much information that you can glean by using old and detailed maps of the area where your ancestors lived. This is from James Tanner's blog Genealogy's Star and completely blows my away with the information that is on this site. It will take some time but do some exploring on this site and you will be surprised at what you find.

Happy ancestor hunting.

Genealogy's Star: Explore new territory in the Google Maps Gallery: Sometimes the Internet is like visiting a town you haven't seen for years and finding that all new buildings have sprung up where the...

Explore new territory in the Google Maps Gallery

HISTORICAL ATLASES AND MAPS OF U.S. AND STATES

If you like to use maps in your genealogy research, you need to take a look at this site. There are too many types of maps on this site to try to list them all. I will mention one which is from the Animap program that I have spoken of in our GENCOM meetings. If you go to a state and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will see the maps that are created using Animap, and this is all FREE!!!! I am planning a GENCOM program later in the year on maps and using Google Earth for your research. Take a look at this and maybe you can have some input to my presentation.
Happy ancestor hunting.

RIVERS OF THE UNITED STATES MAP

If you are a genealogist you have to love maps - all kinds.  One of my favorite type of maps is one that shows rivers.  One of the neatest programs around that does this is "Streamer" Rivers of the United States Map.

The Streamer map shows all of the rivers of the United States and allows you to zoom in and out on a specific river and to trace the course of the river either upstream or downstream.  This program is located on the National Atlas website  http//nationalatlas.gov/streamer/Streamer/streamer.html.

The map below is an upstream trace of the Mississippi River, which shows all of the rivers and streams that make up the watershed of the Mississippi River.

The map below is a downstream trace of the Red River from it's beginning as Little Red River just East of Silverton, Texas to where it empties into the Atchafalaya River and then into the Gulf of Mexico.

You may ask, "Why is this type of map important to genealogists?"  As genealogy researchers we need to remember that our ancestors did not have the means of travel that we enjoy today.  One of the major means of transportation in the United States and Colonial America before trains, automobiles and airplanes was the rivers.  How did your ancestors travel to the places they resided?

One of my roadblocks in my research has been to determine the route my fourth great grandfather, Hugh Jones, took from Orange County, Virginia to Anson County, North Carolina where he met and married my fourth great grandmother Lydia White Jones.  My assumption for many years had been that he left home at a young age and traveled the "Fall Line" Road to an area on the border of North and South Carolina near Anson County.  Several of his older brothers and sisters move to a location in North Carolina called "Happy Valley" on the banks of the Yadkin River near Lenoir and Wilkesboro, NC following the Revolutionary War.  The road that they used was probably the "Upper Road"which was West of the "Fall Line" road.  After seeing the route of the Yadkin and Pee Dee rivers on this map, I wonder, did Hugh come to the northern part of North Carolina with his brothers and sisters and then decide to move on South to greener pastures?  This map shows that it would not have been difficult to make this move and  this idea has opened up new research possibilities for me to use to break through this brick wall.

I love using maps to do my genealogy research and this is one of the greatest map tools that I have seen.

Happy ancestor hunting.