Maps

So, I wanted to take a moment and write about maps. Maybe I'm just slow, because I'm sure that it has been talked about in all of my classes, but am beginning to realize the importance of using maps, from the very start, on each project that I do. Once I do some preliminary searching for the individual and have a locality and a time period, the next thing I do is look that place up in maps.

I know that many academics feel that using an online mapping program such as Google Earth is not as "scholarly" as using a printed atlas or other map collection, however I have found such online resources very beneficial, and often can be more accurate in detail. For example, I wanted to know the distance (as the crow flies) between two cities for a genealogical case I was working on. I pulled up my Google Earth, found the cities and measured their distance with the built-in ruler tool. This gave me an accurate distance to the hundredth of a mile. I personally don't see the benefit of taking the extra time to go pull out an atlas and a ruler and and measure the distance and do the math, when such a tool is available that can do the job faster, and more accurately. That having been said, there is great value in atlases that show jurisdictional boundaries that may have have changed over time.

Anyway, enough about that. What I wanted to write about using the USGS website and the AniMap application to help with finding the county jurisdictions of a given place. If you go to the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) section of their page, you can search for names of cities, towns, rivers, schools, or just about geographic feature. The nice thing is that it will even find place-names that don't exist anymore. There are links located on the side that will plot your location on the following maps:

• USGS The National Map
• TopoZone.com
• GNIS in Google Map
• Microsoft Virtual Earth
• TerraFly.com
• TerraServer DOQ
• TerraServer DRG
• Find the Watershed
• MapQuest
• Yahoo! Local Maps
• Expedia

This is a very nice feature. But something that I discovered to be very helpful is to take the longitude and latitude listed under the place information from GNIS, and plot that into the AniMap application. (This piece of software is available for $79 as of today from GoldBug.com, and is a windows based application). AniMap shows all of the changes in county boundaries over time throughout the United States. This can be very helpful in determining which jurisdictions you need to look under for records regarding your ancestors. Once I know the counties that are applicable, I can then search the Family History Library Catalog (under a place Search) so that I know what types of records are available for me nearby. I also then search the BYU HBLL Catalog for historical background information on that particular county. Anyway, I found this to be very helpful in my research, so I thought I'd pass the information on to others—in hopes that it may be helpful. :o)