Major Improvements to OldMapsOnline

One of the most valuable websites for discovering old maps around the world, OldMapsOnline.org has just gotten a lot more useful. The original interface for the website was innovative and allowed you to select a part of the world in a rectangle and then see a list of the maps available. The updated interface focuses more on a particular location and makes finding a pertinent map much easier. The origin of the website is explained as follows.

OldMapsOnline developed out of a love of history and heritage of old maps. The project began as a collaboration between Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland and The Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at the University of Portsmouth, UK thanks to funding from JISC. Since January 2013 is the project improved and maintained by volunteers and the team of Klokan Technologies GmbH in their free time. 

OldMapsOnline.org indexes over 400.000 maps. This is only thanks to the archives and libraries that were open to the idea and provided their online content. All new participants are warmly welcomed.

The website is essentially an interactive portal to many huge online map suppliers including the U.S. Geologic Survey, The David Rumsey Map Collections, the New York Public Library, the British Library, The Harvard Library and many more. 

You begin a map search by entering a place name. I decided to start with Provo, Utah. The maps found were associated with the "Parent Place" Utah. Here is an example of an old map of Utah from 1879.

Department Of The Interior General Land Office J.A. Williamson, Commissioner. Territory of Utah. 1879. Compiled from the official Records of the General Land Office and other sources by C. Roeser, Principal Draughtsman G.L.O. Photo lith & print by Julius Bien 16 & 18 Park Place N.Y.

This particular map came from the David Rumsey Map Collection. These are all very high quality maps, although some of them are only available for a fee. Here is the part of the map above showing Provo, Utah:

This website has always been on my list of one of the most valuable places to see old maps. You might want to do a little exploration yourself. Here is a more recent USGS map of the Provo, Utah area:

Searching for Perfection -- Virtual Pedigree, an online family tree interface

Conveying information about complex family relationships in a graphic format and then navigating the resultant accumulation is one of the basic challenges faced by a multitude of genealogy programs. Almost uniformly the programs opt for either a view of the data that conforms to a standard "pedigree" or ancestral view. Here is an example showing the most common format.

Some genealogy program opt for the lineal pedigree, such as the following example from MyHeritage.com:

No matter what format is used to represent a "family tree" the reality of the geometric progression of ancestors defeats any of the more popular graphic interfaces. Within just a few generations, the number of ancestors renders any such graphic practically useless. Developers have tried tricks such a compressing parts of the tree and allowing alternative branches. The representations get really complex when the familial relationship themselves are complex. Multiple marriages, children with shared parentage, step-parents, adopted parents and many other variations in the biological tree often create a fertile field for disagreement and discontent. In addition, it is obvious that the number of a person's ancestors increase geometrically.

The Brigham Young University Technology Lab has been attacking the problem of developing an efficient interface for an online family tree that addresses some, if not all, of the concerns of the developers and technicians. They have been actively developing and testing their Virtual Pedigree program. I just spent more than an hour working through a series of exercises using both the Virtual Pedigree and the more traditional ones on FamilySearch.org Family Tree. This experience reinforced my impressions that the current system of representing familial relationships is often cumbersome and cluggy. The interface in the Virtual Pedigree is very dynamic.

The exercises at the BYU Technology Lab consisted in a series of tests designed to accomplish searching tasks on both the tradition desktop and the more complex activities that could not be performed easily on any interface. I did find myself yearning for a way to speed up the process, such as finding married descendants without children. I am certain that individual utilities could be written to accomplish such tasks, but I the difficulty is creating a program that is less difficult to use than the activity itself. The Virtual Pedigree has some obvious improvements over the nearly generic interface on many of the current programs. After spending an hour or so working with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and working on similar tasks on the Virtual Pedigree, it was apparent that there were some advantages to the Virtual Pedigree over the more traditional navigation of the Family Tree. But both suffered from the numbers issue. Most of the programs rely on a search function to jump around within the family tree when scrolling or clicking are too cumbersome. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree and other programs also use pull-down menus or lists of recently visited ancestors to make navigation easier.

It appears to me that the goal of making a transparently easy method of navigating family trees is still outside of the reach of the programmers, although Virtual Pedigree is a major step in the right direction. At least they are asking the questions and addressing the issues.

My Life in the Libraries

I realized this week, that I was spending most of my time lately in libraries. Most of that time is in the Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah, but I have been regularly visiting and doing research in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is probably no surprise that we have also been visiting the Provo City Library. Not that this is at all unusual. I have been regularly visiting libraries since I was old enough to read.

Other than being a casual observation on my life, what has this got to do with genealogy? I have been making comments recently about the fact that although I am working in a library with millions of books, I seldom see any of those people (mainly students) looking at or using any of the books. You could argue that all that the students (or genealogical researchers) need is online and looking through a pile of old, musty and dusty books is a total waste of time. This is, unfortunate for the student and the researcher, far from the truth. On our most recent visit to the Family History Library, where I am now writing this post, my fellow researchers have very quickly outstripped the online resources and have moved decisively into books and printed records.

Notwithstanding the fact that we have been looking at paper books lately, we cannot fail to notice that huge sections of the paper books in the Family History Library are missing from the shelves. The explanation? They are all being digitized. It is abundantly apparent that the number of computer stations in the Library are increasing and the number of study tables (ostensibly for books) are rapidly decreasing. Where this is most evident is on the first floor (Main Floor) of the Library. There used to be a huge section of biographies and surname books. These have now disappeared almost completely to be replaced with computer stations. The disappearance is directly correlated to the growth of the FamilySearch.org Books collection which now exceeds 250,000 volumes (or so I am told).

So are libraries and paper books on the way out? Well, not exactly. Recent statistics seem to indicate that the move to ebooks may have stalled in the last two years. Publisher's Weekly in September of 2014 reported that paper books still outsold ebooks.

See “E-Books Still Outsold by Hardcover and Paperback.” PublishersWeekly.com. Accessed July 16, 2015. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/64170-e-books-remain-third.html.

For genealogy books the issue is access. Far too many genealogically related tomes are either very scarce or fall into the rare category. Many surname books are privately published and may have only a few extant copies. When these books are digitized, they immediately become more useful to the related family members. But none of this seems to explain the average genealogical researcher's antipathy towards paper books. This informational myopia is alarming. In working with patrons at the BYU Family History Library, I am often astounded at the lack of interest in the very visible and useful book collection. The patrons often ask general questions that could be answered in a matter of seconds if they would take the time to consult some of the very available books that are sitting in plain view.

Just in case you are starting out in genealogy and need a list of books to get going. Here are a few of my suggestions:

Allen, Desmond Walls. First Steps in Genealogy: A Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Family History. Cincinnati, Ohio: Betterway Books, 1998.

Beasley, Donna. Family Pride: The Complete Guide to Tracing African-American Genealogy. New York, NY: Macmillan USA, 1997.

Best, Laura. Genealogy for the First Time: Research Your Family History. New York: Sterling Pub. Co., 2003.

Boudreau, Dennis M, and American French Genealogical Society. Beginning Franco-American Genealogy. [Pawtucket, R.I.?]: A.F.G.S., 1986.

Cleveland, Vikki L. Jeanne. Rooting out Your Ancestory: A Primer for Beginning Genealogy. [S.I.]: Lulu.Com, 2004.

Croom, Emily Anne. Unpuzzling Your Past: The Best-Selling Basic Guide to Genealogy. Cincinnati, Ohio: Betterway Books, 2001.

Dowell, David R. Crash Course in Genealogy. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 2011. http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/?isbn=9781598849400.

Dunn, Michael. A Beginner’s Guide to Online Genealogy, 2015.

Helm, Matthew, and April Leigh Helm. Genealogy Online for Dummies, 2014.

Hibberts, Joyce Whaler, and Kathleen K Saffell. Getting It All Together: A Primer in Beginning Genealogy. Ridgecrest, CA (313 N. Norma, Ridgecrest 93555): Saffell’s Naturally, 1989.

Lind, Marilyn. Beginning Genealogy and a Guide to Continuing Research: With an Introduction to Foreign Research. Cloquet, Mn (1204 W. Prospect, Cloquet 55720): Linden Tree, 1984.

Minshall, William Harold, Ontario Genealogical Society, and Huron County Branch. Beginning in Genealogy. [Goderich, Ont.]: [Huron County Branch, O.G.S.], 1981.

Pelling, George, and George Pelling. Beginning Your Family History in Great Britain. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1989.

Powell, Kimberly. The Everything Guide to Online Genealogy: Use the Web to Trace Your Roots, Share Your History, and Create a Family Tree. Avon, Mass.: Adams Media, 2011.

Rose, Christine, and Kay Germain Ingalls. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Genealogy. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2005.

Schaefer, Christina K. The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women’s Genealogy. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1999.

Smith, Gloria L. Beginning Black-Indian Genealogy, the Seminoles. Tucson, Ariz.: G.L. Smith, 1996.

Wolfman, Ira, and Michael Klein. Do People Grow on Family Trees?: Genealogy for Kids & Other Beginners : The Official Ellis Island Handbook. New York: Workman Pub., 1991.

Woodtor, Dee. Finding a Place Called Home: A Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity. New York: Random House, 1999.

Learn about New England Town Records

Published by John Cary in 1821, this is one of the most interesting atlas maps of the north-eastern parts of the United States to appear in the early 19th century. Centered on New York and Pennsylvania, Cary’s map covers from Lake Huron southward as far as Virginia and North Carolina and eastward as far as the Atlantic Ocean. This map includes the modern day states of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio as well as parts of Ontario and Quebec. The most interesting parts of this map are the north-western quadrants which are dedicated to the Great Lakes and the North Western Territory. The Great Lakes are rendered in accordance with the research produced by D. W. Smith, the surveyor General of Upper Canada, who was assigned to survey Lakes Ontario, Huron, and Erie in the late 18th century. In modern day Ohio, Connecticut’s Western Reserve is noted. The reserve, formally ceded to Connecticut after the Yankee-Pennamite Wars, was the last remnant of Connecticut’s old colonial grant of all territory, from sea-to-sea, falling between the 41st and 42nd parallels. This map also includes numerous references to the American Indian nations occupying the region, including the Chippewa, the Ottawa, and the Six Nations. The “Indian Boundary” is shown bisecting the North West Territory. Created by General Wayne’s treaty of 1795, this boundary line proposed to denotes the southern limit of American Indian lands in the North Western Territory. Prepared in 1821 by John Cary for issue in the 1821 edition of the New Universal Atlas . 

If you have any ancestral lines that go back to the early European settlement of America, particularly in the area that is now in the New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or Vermont, then your research should always include the Town Records where your ancestors lived. Nearly the entire area of New England, with the exception of the northern part of Maine, lies within the jurisdiction of a town or city and most of the local records were kept on a local basis.

In many instances, the Town Records contain almost a complete narrative of life in the town. The information included ranges from lists of livestock brands to tax assessments. It is not uncommon to find records of land transfers, marriages, deaths, probate actions, court records and almost every other type of transaction. In my own research, I found the only known birth record for one of my distant great-grandfathers.

Town Records may still be located in the office of the Town Clerk or may have been gathered into a centralized repository such as a town archive. Many of the records have found their way onto microfilm and may have been digitized and available on one or more online genealogical database programs. For example, FamilySearch.org has Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records from 1627 to 2001 with 1,707,850 images. Yes, you have to search through any records page-by-page from the town or even the area where your ancestral family lived. Because of the detailed nature of the records, they will be very difficult to index. Some partial indexes may be included in the records, made by the Town Clerks over the years. Here is a screenshot of the Massachusetts records:

On FamilySearch.org, the images are further divided by town, date and topic. Here is an example of an early town record from Plymouth Colony in 1636:

You may find the handwriting to be a challenge, at least at first.

Here is a list of some helpful reference books:

Bryan, Frank M. Real Democracy the New England Town Meeting and How It Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10381173.

Crandall, Ralph J. Genealogical Research in New England. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1984.

Dearborn, David Curtis, New England Historic Genealogical Society. Seventeenth-Century New England Research, 2014.

Drake, Samuel G. Result of Some Researches among the British Archives for Information Relative to the Founders of New England, Made in Years 1858, 1859, and 1860: Originally Collected for and Published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and Now Corrected and Enlarged. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1963.

Hatcher, Patricia Law. Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors. Provo, UT: Ancestry, 2006.

Hollick, Martin E, New England Historic Genealogical Society. New Englanders in the 1600s: A Guide to Genealogical Research Published between 1980 and 2005. Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2006.

Lainhart, Ann S, New England Historic Genealogical Society. Digging for Genealogical Treasure in New England Town Records. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996.

Melnyk, Marcia Yannizze. Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999.

New England Library Association and Bibliography Committee. A Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1980.

———. A Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1980.

Sperry, Kip. New England Genealogical Research: A Guide to Sources. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1988.

Westbrook, Perry D. The New England Town in Fact and Fiction. Rutherford [N.J.]; London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; Associated University Presses, 1982.

Papers of the War Department

From time to time, I come across a really important record source that I had never seen or heard of previously. This particular website falls into that category. This website is the Papers of the War Department. Here is a brief explanation of these records taken from the Website:

On the night of November 8, 1800, fire devastated the War Office, consuming the papers, records, and books stored there. Two weeks later, Secretary of War Samuel Dexter lamented in a letter that “All the papers in my office [have] been destroyed.” For the past two centuries, the official records of the War Department effectively began with Dexter’s letter. Papers of the War Department 1784-1800, an innovative digital editorial project, will change that by making some 55,000 documents of the early War Department many long thought irretrievable but now reconstructed through a painstaking, multi-year research effort available online to scholars, students, and the general public.

All of the documents are freely accessible with high resolution digital images and transcriptions. The project is eliciting the public to help in the transcription process.

This is a priceless collection and can be a great resource to some researchers who happen to have ancestors that could have been involved in the military activities of that time period.

Taking on Tax Records for Genealogy

When researching back in the 1700s in Rhode Island, I was able to determine when my ancestral family left the state and moved to New York through tax records preserved in the Hopkinton, Rhode Island Town Records. See Hopkinton (R.I. : Town). Hopkinton, Rhode Island Town Records: 1757-1923. Salt Lake City, Utah: Genealogical Society, 1973. The project required reading the Town Records page-by-page, but the amount of information acquired was well worth the effort. 

Using a tax record to determine the movements of a family is only one of the many ways tax records can help with genealogical research. Quoting from the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki article on United States Taxation:

Governments have collected taxes in the United States since the colonial era. Tax records vary in content according to the purpose of the assessment. They may include the name and residence of the taxpayer, occupation, description of the real estate and name of the original purchaser, description of some personal property, number of males over 21, and the number of school children, slaves, and farm animals. Annual tax lists can help establish ages, residences, relationships, and the year an individual died or left the area. They can be used in the place of missing or destroyed land and census records.

One advantage of searching for tax records is that they are maintained at every level of government. The challenge is that few of these records are readily available online and indexed. To begin a survey of the availability of tax records, it is useful to consult the FamilySearch.org Catalog.  The FamilySearch Catalog is useful, not just to locate research material in the Family History Library, but also as a finding aid to learn what types of records may be available at different jurisdictional levels. For example, a search in the Catalog for "United States" returns an extensive list of sources including several relating to taxation. Here is a screenshot of that portion of the list showing the categories listed under taxation:

By clicking on the triangle arrow, the topic of Taxation (6) is expanded as follows:

At this point, the researcher may conclude that searching for tax records is too difficult and turn to other sources. But this list merely illustrates the point that tax records and not usually included in the types of records considered to be genealogically important. It also points out the fact that tax information may be mixed in with other records, such as my example of gleaning tax information from the Rhode Island Town Records.

I can illustrate the issue of availability by doing a search on the U.S. National Archives website for tax records.

You may not be able to read the results of this search, but there are 774 results returned for "tax records." In the case of one set of records, "Income Tax Records of the Civil War Years," the actual original records are in the National Archives in Boston, Massachusetts. However, this particular record set is digitized and available on Ancestry.com as "U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918." By the way, this is not a source that normally comes up with a general search of Ancestry.com records. It is best searched directly by going to the Ancestry.com Card Catalog and looking for tax records.

Tax records are really "good news -- bad news" for genealogists. The good news, of course, is that this type of record may contain very valuable information. The bad news is that finding and gaining access to these records is more difficult than many other types of records.

Let's Look at U.S. Census Records

Some of the first records beginning genealogists look for are those in the U.S. Federal Census. My first experience with the U.S. Federal Census was not entirely successful. I was doing research in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, long before the census records were digitized and computerized with an index, and I looked for one of my ancestors and found the microfilm copies to be unreadable. It was probably about twenty years before I took another stab at searching the Census.

Today, of course, the experience is completely different. The U.S. Federal Census records are probably the most accessible and easiest to research of any of the records in the United States on a Federal level. There are copies of the Census or indexes of the records in multiple locations on the Web. I am not sure I can list all of the copies, there seems to be a new set of records added regularly. Most of the large commercial websites have a complete or partial copy and there are also copies for free. Here is what I know today about the copies online:

• FamilySearch.org Historical Record Collections -- FamilySearch has a complete index of all of the census years, but the images for the 1810 and 1860 are on other websites. FamilySearch also has many of supplemental schedules. Free
• Ancestry.com -- A complete, indexed set of the U.S. Federal Census records with many of the supplemental schedules. $
• Fold3.com -- Owned by Ancestry.com, Fold3.com has a partial set of census records. Only the 1860 U.S. Federal Census is complete. $
•  Archive.org -- This free website has the complete images of all of the U.S. Federal Census records from 1790 to 1930, however there is no index. If an image is missing from another website, it is probably available on Archive.org. This site also has complete copies of all the supplemental census records, although, I must caution readers that the website is difficult to search and finding the census records is a challenge. You can get the complete list from this link https://archive.org/details/us_census. Free
• Archives.com -- Another Ancestry.com website has a complete set of U.S. Federal Census records from 1790 to 1940. $
• Mocavo.com -- Currently owned by Findmypast.com, this website also has a complete, searchable copy of the entire available U.S. Federal Census from 1890 to 1940. Free search
• 1940Census.archives.gov -- Official 1940 Census Website. Free
• CensusRecords.com -- Owned by Findmypast.com, this website has a complete, searchable set of U.S. Federal Census records. $
• Findmypast.com -- Complete, searchable set of U.S. Census records with some supplementary schedules. The 1940 U.S. Federal Census is free. $ and free
• HeritageQuestOnline.com -- Available only through libraries, this website has a complete, searchable set of the U.S. Federal Censuses. Free in participating libraries.

There are other partial transcriptions and selections. I also suggest checking Cyndi's List for United States, U.S. Census.