History » iSeeAncestors

Overlays Make Old Maps New Again

History, How-To, Life and Times, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Research Methodology, Surname: Pohl, Surname: Voisin No Responses »

Mar 262013

google-earth-00 In a past posting I described how I located the homestead of my great-grandparents Albert and Mary Pohl near Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. I’ve since found that Google Earth is another tool to further visualize the location. It is helpful in modernizing old maps to better understand where my ancestors lived.

What I did is add an overlay of an old map to the modern world shown in Google Earth. This allows you to see precisely where a road, building or property once stood in relation to what’s there now.

Animated Pennsylvania Counties

History, Pennsylvania No Responses »

Jul 092011

Those researching their ancestors in Pennsylvania know that county boundaries changed frequently in the years since 1682. To make these boundary changes easier to see, I animated them.

I used portions of the “Genealogical Map of the Counties” available at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I simply snipped the individual images in their sequence of state maps that show county boundaries and made a short flash animation.

Unfortunately these maps do not show cities and towns, but if you know the county you are interested in, you can see when it was created and how it changed over the years.

View an animated history of Pennsylvania Counties.

Inferno

History No Responses »

Sep 122007

Hamburg, Germany was a major port of embarkation for emigrants bound for America during the nineteenth century. Since the Germans are good record keepers, detailed records were undoubtedly kept about these emigrants, our ancestors. My grandmother Ida Pohl was a little girl when she emigrated with her mother and siblings from Hamburg in 1893. As an amateur genealogist, I was frustrated to learn that most of these records were destroyed by British and American bombers during World War II.