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Ancestry Magazine
9/1/1998 - Archive
| September/October 1998 |
vol. 16 no. 5 |
Using Maps in Family History Research
How do you react when your latest research findings lead you into a new locality? Are you dismayed by your unfamiliarity with the area, or excited by the prospects of what you might find? For most of us, it's a mixture of both. Any new geographic area presents a new learning curve, but we know that's where we're likely to make our new discoveries.
We're faced with learning about the genealogical resources of the area and where they're located. Understanding those resources requires us to learn about the history, culture, and economy of the area, and also of the land itself—its streams, slopes, settlements, and stands of woods and crops. Once we zero in on the place a particular family lived, we'll want to know how far they were from the churches, schools, shops, services, and, finally, cemeteries that they used.
In recent years, we've seen a number of area reference guides appear which reduce the learning curve considerably. Some are comprehensive, covering an entire country, while others focus on a single state or even a county. These tell us the resources available and point us toward books that discuss the history, culture, and economics of an area. However, no words can do the land itself justice the way a visual representation can.
That's where maps come in.
We can think of maps as a symbolic aerial view of the land in question. Most of them today are, in fact, based on aerial photographs, but are more useful because the mapmaker has pulled out of the photograph's clutter of detail those features of greatest interest, and then identified them. The features selected by the mapmaker depend on the user the map is intended for.
Types of Maps
Like other resources we use in genealogy, maps were made with other users in mind, as their type designations suggest. Many of them are very useful in family history research, especially the following:
Highway maps, which show us how to get from one location to another.
Railroad and canal maps, which show the means of travel available to our forebears.
County atlases, popular in the nineteenth century, which often show individual houses and owners' names in rural areas.
Topographic maps, which show land forms—hills, valleys, plains, streams, and vegetation-as well as features resulting from human activity, usually distinguishing them by color. A common scheme, used in maps of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Ordnance Survey maps of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and similar maps of other countries, is to use brown for land forms, green for vegetation, blue for water (superimposing brown or green for marshes and wetlands), and black for culture, as works of human endeavor are called, with red accenting principal roads.
Public land surveys, done in the states where land was originally owned by the federal government, which show location of land described by its position within public land townships.
Fire insurance maps of urban areas, published from the late nineteenth century to the present, which show individual buildings with their configuration and type of construction, water supplies, and similar information of use in rating fire risk.
Tax and assessment maps (sometimes called cadastral maps), which usually show, at a minimum, property boundaries, dimensions, and a reference to the owner.
Private surveys, which show the extent of one or a group of adjoining properties, usually identifying the owners.
Political boundary change maps, which show changes over time in jurisdictional boundaries (national, state, county, and city or town). While all the preceding types of maps show political boundaries, these boundaries may have changed both before and after a map was made. The boundary change maps direct us to the proper jurisdictions for records at particular points in time.
Map Scale
Looking at the list above, we see that those toward the top cover the largest areas, while those toward the bottom cover small or very small areas. Those that cover large areas are, conversely (but for reasons which will become clear), called small-scale, and those that cover the smallest areas are called large-scale.
Scale tells us how many units on the ground are represented by one unit on the map. The scale with which we may be most familiar is called a graphic scale—a bar on which equivalent distances are marked off. A large-scale property survey might have a bar two inches long, with "0" at one end, "100 feet" in the middle, and "200 feet" at the end. Usually we would see the same scale stated in words beneath the bar or graphic scale: "One inch equals one hundred feet." We might also see the same scale expressed by the fraction 1/1200, or by the ratio 1:1200; each means that one unit of length on the map—inch, centimeter, or foot—represents 1,200 of those same units on the ground. One inch on the survey or map equals 1,200 inches on the ground, which in turn equals 100 feet, as described by the words under the bar.
Large-scale maps are those with the largest fractional scale (a thousandth of anything is larger than a millionth of it) and show the largest amount of detail, but of only a small area. Typical examples are the USGS quadrangle maps (both the older ones at 1:62,500 and the more recent ones at 1:24,000, or 1 inch to 2,000 feet), city and suburban street maps, and private property surveys.
Medium-scale maps are those with scales between 1:75,000 (a little over a mile to the inch) and 1:600,000 (just under ten miles to the inch). Typical examples are highway maps of the smaller states and many nineteenth-century county maps and atlases. Where development was sparse, they may be all that's available, and will provide the needed degree of detail.
Small-scale maps show a smaller amount of detail but cover large areas, and allow us to orient ourselves and identify the locations where we will seek out larger-scale maps that provide more detail. Typical examples are world atlas maps and highway maps covering the larger states.
The newer and larger-scale 1:24,000 USGS topographic maps give an excellent representation of an area as it is or was within the last generation, but we shouldn't neglect the older ones at the 1:62,500 scale. Many of them were made at the turn of the century, and they may show the churches and rural schools our ancestors attended or the houses in which they grew up.
Map Symbols
Each series of maps will have its own set of symbols, shown in the margin or on a separate accompanying sheet, or on a page at the beginning of an atlas. Many symbols are international in use or vary only slightly from map to map.
Land form symbols, often shown in brown, take several forms. On older maps, short shading lines running up and down the slope (called "hachures") show hills and mountains; the closer together the lines, the steeper the slope. Modern large-scale topographic maps use contour lines, which run around a hill in such a way that the line is always at the same height above sea level. If we traced a contour line on an actual hill and walked along it, one foot might be lower than the other, but we would neither climb nor descend as we followed it. Where contour lines are close together, the slope is steep; along a cliff side they run together. The further apart they are, the more level the land. Usually every fifth line is marked somewhere along its length with a number, showing its height in feet or meters (the marginal information will tell which) above sea level.
Water features, often shown in blue, show everything from oceans, rivers, and canals to intermittent streams that run only after a rainstorm. Wells and springs may also be marked. The extent to which these features are shown depends on how important water is to life in the area, or to its economy and transportation.
Vegetation may be shown in green, but symbols vary considerably. Solid or shaded green often represents natural woodlands or grasslands, while small green circles in orderly rows generally represent orchards or tree farms.
Cultural features, shown in black on multicolor maps and usually making up most of the detail, range from structures such as homes, schools, and businesses, through highways, railroads, and electrical transmission lines, to prisons, tank farms, industrial plants, power stations, and dams. Often building uses are indicated by an add-on symbol-a small flagpole and pennant for schools, or a cross, a star of David, or a crescent for churches, synagogues, and mosques. Cemeteries, of particular interest to genealogists, are identified by the letters "CEM" or, on older maps, by a cross within the boundary lines. Towers of all sorts and high chimneys, being prominent features on the landscape, are usually shown, and the most prominent features are identified by name, to the extent the scale of the map permits. On small-scale maps, only cities and towns may be named, while large-scale maps will identify prominent roads, public buildings, and other major structures.
Finally, on some maps, both large- and small-scale, red is often used to indicate principal roadways. On large-scale maps, the red will appear between the black edges of the roadway, while on small-scale highway maps it, and other colors, may be used to indicate classifications of roads, from high-speed, high-capacity highways to rural by-ways.
Using Unfamiliar Maps
Unless we're thoroughly familiar with a map series, our first step on encountering a new map should be to look for the legend, in a corner or the margin. Often we'll find everything we need to know right there: the scale, so we can measure distances; the meaning of any special symbols or colors used; the interval between contour lines; and, perhaps most important of all, the date the map was created.
Most of us have had the experience, in this day of rapidly changing landscapes, of finding a familiar road cut off to make way for a superhighway or a new shopping mall. Relying on outdated maps can be as risky as relying on outdated memory, unless our purpose is to discover how the landscape looked when the old map was made.
Using Old Maps
As genealogists, when we use old maps, it is often with the objective, or at least hope, of locating the spots where our ancestral families lived. If we're using one of those nineteenth-century county atlases where farmhouses appear with legends such as "Jas M'Dermott 140 ac." and we know from deed records that our great-grandfather James McDermott owned a 140-acre farm in the vicinity, our problem is solved—almost.
Land Platting
In land platting, we use deed descriptions to make our own large-scale boundary map of a property from the description in a deed record, using ruler and protractor. We note on it all the information shown in the deed: boundary line lengths and compass directions, public land survey descriptions, names of adjoining owners, and anything else relating to the land. This may allow us to positively identify the land's location and to sketch in its boundaries on a copy of an area map. But platting does more than let us confirm the location of our forebears' land.
If we search out the deeds for the adjoining owners (who could be family connections or old neighbors from another locality) and in turn plat their lands, we begin to know more and more about the locality and its people, and, in the process, tumble those brick walls we so often encounter in genealogy. At recent national genealogical conferences, workshops on land-platting filled to capacity in advance registrations. Once several plats are made using hand methods and we understand the process, new computer programs can take much of the tedium out of platting, but it still depends on the quality of our deed research.
At Ease with Maps
The more comfortable we become with the use of maps of all types, as well as with associated techniques such as land platting, the more likely we are to approach new localities with excitement rather than apprehension. A good map can quickly make you feel you've visited the place in person, long before setting foot there.
Donn Devine, a genealogical consultant from Wilmington, Delaware, is also an attorney and archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. A contributor to numerous genealogical publications, he holds Certified Genealogist and Certified Genealogical Instructor designations from the Board for Certification of Genealogists, of which he is also a trustee. He is a director of the National Genealogical Society and chairs its Standards Committee.
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