Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It’s Saturday Night again – 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)  Do you collect maps of the places that you have ancestors or family?  I do!  I love maps.

Over the years I have purchased maps. Some of my favorite purchases have either been plat books or photocopies of pages from a plat book. I love these maps because they show the owners of the land. Since many plat books are now available online, I tend not to collect them any more.

However, I do have three FAVORITE maps. Two of these are web sites and the third is hanging on my wall.

Map of US

I love mapofus.org because it helps me figure out the evolution of the county boundaries. This helps me know that I have to research several counties even though the families may have been neighbors in a county based on today’s boundaries. My Crawford research is a perfect example of this.

• James Crawford (Sally Smith Duggins) – my ancestor – married in Garrard County KY in 1799
• James Crawford (Martha Knight)- neighbor to my ancestor over time – married in Lincoln County KY in 1792 even though he likely was living in Garrard County, KY in 1799
• James Crawford (Rebecca Anderson Maxwell) – likely uncle James (Martha) – purchased land in Madison County but that land was in Garrard county when it was sold.

First Landowners Project ($) (www.historygeo.com)

This is one of my ‘go-to’ websites when researching a family. It allows me to search public domain land records to see if the family was one of the first land owners in an area. When I’m fortunate to find a family identified, I can also see who their neighbors were. I also use this site to figure out where a parcel of land is in relation to cities, towns and roads based on the range township information.

Garrard County, KY landowners

My favorite map was created by Fred Simpson in 1992 from the early Virginia land surveys. This map shows the original land owners drawn on a topographical map.