52 Weeks to Better Genealogy = Challenge 8 Online Maps

Arizona Online Map Collections:

Arizona Route 66  - The site, Road Wanderer, is dedicated to “lost byways, historic highways and legendary journeys” of an earlier age and contains many fun things to check out but I will be talking about the map of Route 66 today. Spend some time reading about the history of Route 66 then as author, Guy Randall says “buckle up” for a cyber tour with the interactive map. The author states initially his plan was to document the “vanished road” that was Route 66, in California and Arizona, but morphed into a discovery and documentary of the entire length of Route 66. There are wonderful old pictures and descriptions of the towns along the way. Each section of Route 66 is divided by state and the cyber tour takes the reader to all different areas of the map just by clicking. Words don’t do justice. If you are at all interested in the history of this route or the small towns along it’s route, I highly recommend visiting this site. Author and Web Design – Guy Randall.

Sharlott Hall Museum – Yavapai County Historical Society maps and Arizona Memory Project. - The Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona provides wonderful historical events as well as an extensive research facility. The grounds and building of the Museum are the original first territorial Governor’s residence which was restored by Sharlot M. Hall (1870-1943), Arizona’s first territorial historian. Just in checking the map holdings I found maps from as early as 1778 which was a Spanish ethnographic map of the southwest. There are plat maps of Prescott, numerous railroad maps, road maps, geographic maps and mining operation maps. The online presence displays the maps at a low to medium resolution depending on the map, but for reasonable prices you can purchase maps of interest in various formats from a print to a cd to an emailed image. Some of the maps show the different proposed boundaries of the territories of the west in 1859, which is very different from what we have today. Anyone doing research in this part of the country should check out Sharlot Hall Museum Research/Archives.

Cline Library – The Northern Arizona University private collection apparently has quite an extensive map collection in their archives, but there were only a few displayed online.

Livingston County Michigan Historical and Genealogical Project website created and maintained by Pam Rietsch – 1895 Rand McNally New World Atlas. This website has extremely high resolution scans of pages from the above atlas for all the states. Definitely a wonderful resource for state maps and county maps of 1895. There are several other interesting items on this site but I’ll let you explore on your own. One other map link on the Livingston co, Michigan website is for maps scanned and uploaded to the internet by Miss Roelof Oddens. I did not have a chance to explore the site too much, but it appears to be very comprehensive with many OLD maps, especially of Europe.

My last item of interest is Map History/History of Cartography: THE Gateway to the Subject . The link to US maps is here.  This is as it says, a gateway to other sites on the internet with map images. The site provides indexes and links to numerous sites with maps on the web. Take a cup of tea and spend some quality time checking out this site and its links.

I hope I have given you something new to look at that will help in your family research and understanding of our country's history. I sure have found some new things for myself. Looking forward to the next challenge for 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Week 7

Google Maps - Wow do I love this application.  I recently had the opportunity for a first time ever trip to the Northeast US.  I am a west coast gal, through and through but have always wanted to visit the East.  I used Google Maps extensively to plot our two week trip through Rhode Island, Massachusettes, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut.  I used it to find the old cemeteries I wanted to visit, the historical societies I wanted to visit and the roads we needed to travel.  But now I want to try to use it to view the places my parents lived and the places their parents lived.  It works pretty well for that but some of the more rural areas don't have the greatest resolution.  Hold on, there is a new kid on the block, well not that new but maybe new to some of you.  Google Earth.  It is much like Google Maps, except it is an application you have to download to your computer.  But man oh man is it worth it.  You can get down to ground level, just like you are driving your car down the roads of the WORLD.  Not just the US, but the whole world.  How great is that.  I am still learning about it thanks to Lisa Louise Cooke and her very interesting session during the recent Mesa Family History Expo. 

There is a wonderful option to overlay old maps onto the present day map on Google Earth, using the Rumsey Historical Map collection.  Lisa has hinted at the ability to use your own maps for this same functionality but I'm still working on how to do that. Many of my areas of interest are much more rural areas with no maps available through Rumsey but I'm hoping I'll be able to figure this out.  Yeah, I found where you can overlay your own maps.  This will definately need some more play time.  Check either one of these options out.  They will be very useful in visualizing your ancestors migration or just movement within a state.  In my case my gtgdparents were in Red Oak, Creston, Clarinda, and Vilisca, Iowa.  It might sound like they did a lot of moving, however after looking at the maps, those towns are all within about a 60 mile area. 

Take some time and go exploring with Google Maps and Google Earth.  You will be amazed at what you can see.

Another great option is to create a migration pattern map using Google Earth.  You input the different places your ancestors were and the map draws the migration lines for you.  Again, still working on fine tuning this, but what a great visual tool. 

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Challenge #5 Using WorldCat

I have used WorldCat in the past and I have find books my local library doesn't have.  I have found books I would like to read but they usually seem to be non-circulating books so I can't utilize Inter Library Loan to get my hands on them.  However, after playing around with WorldCat and also visiting my local junior college library with our local genealogical society, which was Challenge #4 I think, I learned I can also get many of the journals, quarterlies and newsletters published by major genealogical associations.  Actually, you apparently don't get the entire journal or quarterly.  You simply get a photocopy of the article you are interested in.  How great is that??  I have just today ordered several different articles from the APG Quarterly.  It will take a couple weeks to get the articles but I'm good with that.  So, when you find reference to an article in a journal or quarterly that is not available in your local library, use WorldCat and IIL and you can then see the actual article and add it to your own collection.