Mapping Rural and Urban Ancestors

As we bring our series of posts on prominent maps and mapping websites to a close, we want to mention two more important resources for genealogists. The first is a subscription website that may help you as you begin to collect more information on the locations in which your ancestors settled, especially if they were first landowners. Historygeo.com is a website that specializes in linking first landowners to maps so that you don’t have to do the plotting and linking yourself. It contains information on more than twelve million landowners in the thirty public land states, all linked to an interactive map, and, when you subscribe, you can personalize lists and add markers, migration routes, and other details of interest to you.

The site also contains a large collection of antique maps. You can browse the collection of all of the United States and some foreign countries, or you can search for exactly what you are looking for. 

The search function of the website is free and you may want to plug in some of your names to see if they show up. You will get a list of states and then, if you click a link, a list of counties where the names appear. The website also contains two lengthy tutorials (YouTube recordings) that you may want to watch to see if the collections are of relevance to you. There is currently no free trial, but you can subscribe for three months for $20, making it fairly easy to try the site out. In addition, some libraries, like St. Louis County Library, offer free access, so you should check with your local library.

As American cities grew in a rather topsy-turvy fashion during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fires became more of a hazard, and many building owners relied on fire insurance to save them from financial disaster. Fire insurance companies needed detailed maps of the areas they were protecting so they knew how to assign payments. For many years, the insurance companies sent people to inspect every property and to assess its risk for fire, but with the rapid growth in cities, that became impractical. The need for a better system inspired Daniel Alfred Sanborn to create the Sanborn Map Company in 1866 and within fifty years, it became the largest of the companies producing fire insurance maps.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Saint Louis, Independent City, Missouri. Sanborn Map Company, Jul, 1907. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn04858_003/.

What is special about these maps is their incredible detail of urban areas throughout the United States. The maps were produced in full color and included all outbuildings, homes, businesses, and public building, all done to scale. If you are researching urban ancestors between 1866 and the mid-twentieth century, the Sanborn maps will provide you with a captivating look at the neighborhoods in which they lived. You can see the places where they shopped, worshipped, went to school, and enjoyed a bit of recreation, all in relation to their homes.

“HistoryGeo.com and Sanborn Maps: Rural and Urban Map Research” in the StLGS Fall Speaker Series

Sanborn maps are widely available online and StLGS Systems Director, Bob Goode, will explain how you can access them as well as how you can make the most of the HistoryGeo.com website in the last of the four lectures in the StLGS Fall Speaker Series, “Mapping Our Ancestors,” which will take place live via Zoom on Saturday, 16 October 2021. Bob will help you discover how these two resources can enhance your knowledge of your ancestors.

Three additional presentations round out our Speaker Series on maps: an introduction to the earliest American migration trails, an overview of federal land records, plat maps, and plat books, and a detailed look at the map collections on the Library of Congress website. The Fall Speaker Series is coming soon, and you won't want to miss it. You can register for this exciting day of lectures now on the StLGS website!