Inspired by visual artists who have explored the creative possibilities of maps and map-making, I have envisioned my own map. I just cannot create it.
As a genealogy researcher, I’ve found that locations can cause a lot of confusion.
As an example, here’s a situation that I encountered for countless ancestors residing in North Carolina: A series of U.S. Censuses are available for the ancestor. Every ten years, for a series of decades, a record exists of him or her residing in the very same county, year after year–usually Mecklenburg County or Anson County, North Carolina. But later, a census for a later year is found, indicating that the ancestor lived in Union County at that later date.
When I first saw this, I was concerned. Did this census correspond to the same ancestor? Was this a record for someone else? But when I looked closely at the other residents listed in the home in the newly discovered record, I found that they were often identical to those residing in the home in the previous censuses. It seemed, then, that this was the same person.
Other times, I knew with certainty that the newly found record “belonged” to the same ancestor, but why, I wondered, would this elderly ancestor leave the county in which he or she had lived all their life and move–by themselves or with a spouse–to another county in their senior years?
Perhaps the ancestor was a widow or widower and had moved in with a son’s or daughter’s family, I rationalized. But the fact that I found censuses for the very same year for each of the ancestor’s children, showing them residing separately from the ancestor in question confirmed that the ancestor had not moved in with one of his or her children.
By a process of elimination, I deduced that the census was correctly connected to this ancestor in spite of the fact that he or she now resided in a different county.
Below is one example of many in my tree:
Although this issue baffled me for some time, I live in the age of Google and, now, AI. Asking questions worded in just the right way finally provided an explanation: boundaries of those counties had changed during the ancestor’s lifetime. In the case of the ancestor above, Union County was created in 1842 by combining parts of both Mecklenburg County and Anson County, North Carolina.
This is a list of changes made to the counties of North Carolina in just a nine-year span. Changes were made prior to these—in the early 19th century—to replace county names associated with British rule of the Colonies.
These and other changes before and after these dates were made in order to break up the large original counties into a number of smaller ones.
Also notice that one county was given a new official name but not an official spelling of that name!
The full history of counties of the state of North Carolina and an interactive map can be found here.
David Thomas Smith takes screencaps composited from Google Maps and reconstructs these fragments piece-by-piece into mirrored images inspired by Persian rugs. This image is from a series entitled “Anthropocene.”
The issue I just described pertained to residents of the United States. I posses far less familiarity with the states, counties, regions, districts, or provinces of other nations, much less at what times in history a country might have changed its borders or government jurisdiction.
What about parts of the world that were once part of one nation that were later usurped by another? Or divisions that were created within a country–such as Northern Ireland? Or a place that changed its name to reflect different political or religious leadership, such as the city of Leningrad becoming the city of St. Petersburg? My husband’s tree is particularly problematic in this regard. The given place of birth of his great-grandparents and his maternal grandparents varies widely from record to record. I have seen the place of birth for his ancestors listed as “Ukraine,” “Russia,” “Poland,” and “Austria.”
Ed Fairburn uses paper maps as canvases for incredibly detailed portraits, rendering human features as topographical landscapes on top of street maps, star charts, railroad blueprints and other types of maps. The portraits seem to blend seamlessly with the landscape features, with rivers and roads running through them like veins.
I would love to better understand the ways in which boundaries and alliances and place names have changed in Europe and the United Kingdom over time. In lieu of taking a crash course in world history, I wonder if anyone reading this knows of a reference book from which I could easily see listed details such as the following about any given place:
- a timeline of its geographical boundaries with maps
- a timeline of its various name changes, if any
- a timeline of its official religion(s), if sanctioned
- a timeline of wars fought in that place and allies of the nation at the time.
- a timeline of its foreign occupations, such as in times of war.
- a history of its specific governments, rulers, or entities of jurisdiction.
Maps and paper cutting art come together in a series from London-based artist Claire Brewster.
I remember seeing somewhere–maybe a visitor’s center at a Civil War battlefield?–an interesting animated time-lapse video which began by showing a map of the United States on which states designated as “free” or “slave” were shown as well as which states joined the Confederacy. A time-lapse visualization of the various campaigns of the war followed. One could see in real time which battles were going on concurrently in different parts of the country.
Remarkable time-lapse videos covering longer time periods also exist on the Internet. The video below shows the changing states and territories of the United States year by year:
The time-lapse video below is fantastic too, mapping the entire world from one year to the next:
As wonderful as these time-lapse videos are, and as excited as I would be to find a reference book such as I described, I am actually fantasizing about a resource of an interactive nature–something where a mouse click could lead one to all kinds of details about the history of that specific geographical pin-point on the map throughout history through images, videos, and links.
I’m imagining a world map where one could right click anywhere and get a drop-down menu listing choices of various time periods. After selecting a given period of time, one could then see corresponding borders, city and county or province names and jurisdictions, etc., at that particular time. The corresponding map image and associated media would change with each drop-down selection as well. Or perhaps this program or website could feature transparent overlays so that one could more readily see the specific changes in the borders and designated names over time.
If something like this does exist, I’d love to know about it. But if, as I assume, such a source is not yet available, perhaps someone with some time and computer programming expertise might set out to make such a map a reality.
Post your proposed project on Kickstarter, email me a link, and I’ll promptly help fund it. I promise!
Written for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge—Week 29: “A Source I Want to Understand Better.” PROMPT: Some sources that we use are fairly straightforward. Others… not so much. This week, explore a source that you don’t quite understand and the ancestor that it pertains to. I have chosen instead to imagine a multi-media source that, to my knowledge, does not yet exist and how such a reference might supply historical background and geographic context that would assist in reconciling seeming incongruities between records.
