Locating Your Ancestor's Land on Modern Maps

If you have been working with land records as part of your family history research, you know that it is not always easy to discover the exact location of the land your family owned. First, you have to know how “chunks” of land were divided and where your family’s part fits in. Then, you have to understand the terminology: sections, townships, and ranges. A further problem is situating the property on a modern map as opposed to what the countryside looked like a hundred or so years ago. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a website that allowed you to see where your ancestor's property was in a modern setting?

Thanks to Mark Madras, one of our technology team members, for finding and sharing an interesting website that can help you to do just that by placing land descriptions on a modern Google map. Be forewarned, however . . . The website is privately owned and supported by dozens of ads, both pop-up and static, so you will need to keep moving things out of your way and pay no attention to all of the ads that populate the top, right side, and even the center of the pages. Yes, they are terribly distracting, but when you see what you can do, you will forgive the distractions! (Or you can donate some money and “join” for an ad-free experience.)

Here’s how to get started and what you can find. First, go to randymajors.org. This is a very large website with many mapping possibilities, but what we will focus on is the part of the site that allows us to pinpoint land descriptions.

On the home page, look for the Reference Maps tab in the navy blue menu bar at the top. Hover your mouse pointer to get the pull-down menu and select “Section Township Range Maps by State” at the bottom of the list.

In the next window, which lists the thirty available states for this feature, scroll to the state in which your land is located and click on it. In our first example below, we’ll look at Missouri. The state is divided into hundreds of red boxes representing the outlines of parcels of land: sections, townships, and ranges. You can zoom into any and all of them, if you like.

When the map opens, there are two pale blue bars at the top and the bottom (see below) that allow you to search a location in two ways. If you click on a spot in the state, the top of the map will give you the section, township, range, meridian, and county. Hovering over “Map” in the upper right allows you to toggle “Terrain” on and off. Showing the terrain fills the map with hills, mountains, and other natural features. The checkboxes in the lower left turn on/off other choices.

Here, you can see the terrain showing in a portion of Crawford County, Missouri. The top of the map shows us that we are in Section 29, Township 40 North, Range 2 West, 5th Principal Meridian.

Let's move into Perry County, Illinois, to map out a land deed that shows an ancestor owned the southeast one-fourth of the southeast one-fourth of Section 12, Township 4 South, Range 2 West, a total of forty acres. Is it possible to get that detailed? Yes! use the blue bar at the bottom of the map and you can zero into an exact parcel, shown below by a small yellow rectangle with specifics noted in the bottom bar.

Of course, on your computer screen, you can zoom in to show everything more clearly than we can include here. As you can see, this website offers a lot of flexibility in placing your ancestors into history. Don't be intimidated by all the bells and whistles. You can't break anything, and the more comfortable you get, the more helpful the site will be. Just don't start on these maps if you have something else to do because half the day may go by before you realize it!