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Vintage County Maps

Bob Spiers

Bob Spiers

LostCousins Superstar
As part of my Family Story I want to add what will likely be an Appendix mapping the English counties with boundaries circa 19th Century. In my case I would want Worcestershire & Warwickshire and touching upon Staffordshire, Shropshire & Gloucestershire.

Can anyone pinpoint where I could perhaps download a 'free' outline map of each county, perhaps with major towns shown but not essential. The idea being -unless there is also a piece of software which will allow it to be done digitally - to print off and manually add the villages, hamlets in coloured inks with a legend added to explain relevance to my paternal & maternal lines.

If vintage county maps exist only with full towns and villages shown, then I could of course print off and trace outlines. I will most likely want to merge them anyway as many locations border two counties, many of which changed over time and do not fully relate to modern day county boundaries.

That is the basic gist of what I seek to do and thereafter of course I would scan the completed effort and incorporate as an Appendix and add text to explain individual family movements. I know I can Google and find full county maps but wonder if someone can suggest which may be the best for my purpose.
 
Bob, I was going to mention the same things that Alexander has. And if you haven't started using FTAnalyzer yet with its mappings and locations, then you should really try it. It drops pins on the map for your ancestors, and you can see how they move through time.
 
Alexander Bisset said:
Have you looked at the maps.familysearch.org site? They have the 1851 boundaries which are a good point of reference for English maps. The Vision of Britain website is also a good one for showing how areas changed over time. Various sites have boundary files and you can use my FTAnalyzer application to view those boundaries overlaid on historic or modern maps.
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Well I struck gold just with your first recommendation (maps family search) which when you click individual counties provides just the detail I have in mind. I will explore the second recommendation as well as I have often been caught out by boundary changes with the midland counties (and I daresay elsewhere).

I will also check your FTA as well as both you and Tim have recommended. Many thanks
 
Tim said:
Bob, I was going to mention the same things that Alexander has. And if you haven't started using FTAnalyzer yet with its mappings and locations, then you should really try it. It drops pins on the map for your ancestors, and you can see how they move through time.
Click to expand...
Thanks Tim and see my response to Alexander.
 
I haven't mapped boundaries, but I've been playing with javascript to customize google maps to add marker pins on my ancestor's birthplaces and draw lines between the marker pins so that it shows the spread over Britain - a bit like a normal family tree drawing but laid out in locations rather than plain tree format. As it is a basic google map it is zoomable and switchable to satellite or street view, with person identification when the mouse pointer hovers over a pin. I got the clues of how to do it by searching for "google map pin markers". If anyone wants sample code to include in an html page then let me know then I'll send a copy.
 
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As well as the old boundaries, you may be interested in the spread of your ancestors names. This web site shows the spread of family names from 1881 to 1998.
 
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MelG said:
I haven't mapped boundaries, but I've been playing with javascript to customize google maps to add marker pins on my ancestor's birthplaces and draw lines between the marker pins so that it shows the spread over Britain - a bit like a normal family tree drawing but laid out in locations rather than plain tree format. As it is a basic google map it is zoomable and switchable to satellite or street view, with person identification when the mouse pointer hovers over a pin. I got the clues of how to do it by searching for "google map pin markers". If anyone wants sample code to include in an html page then let me know then I'll send a copy.
Click to expand...
Have you tried the Maps and Locations features in FTAnalyzer yet?
 
Thanks Tim, I had seen that feature, but I wanted to do a web page for my family tree site and needed to customize a map showing the links between ancestors and where they were born. Unfortunately the ftp server of my site is down at the moment so I can't update it to show you. Also, I will be able to screen shot it and add the image to a family document I am writing.
 
This is a screen shot of the customized google map showing the ancestors of my ancestors, plus my wife's. Mine were a bit widespread becoming clustered in & around London while my wife's were mainly centered around Derbyshire.
 
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That looks so good, but what do you do about the ones that emigrate far and wide or are all the lines above for pre-emigration days? And what about those who came to live in the UK from elsewhere (perhaps you don't have any)?
 
Hi Gillian, Although some of my ancestors did emigrate to America, I don't have any that were born abroad, or should I say I've not found any yet, but if I did, the latitude & longitude could be entered into the code for the map & it would show the marker pin with a connecting line. I created the map not only for a document I'm writing but also for my family tree web site. That version is fully scrollable and zoomable and the user can switch to satellite or street view as with normal Google maps. If you would like to see the web version, please visit and select the Ancestor Location Map option from the menu on the left hand side.
 
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I've amused myself with a Google map of my two globe trotting gggf's, places where I have intersected with them on my travels so far and my bucket list of trips!
 
Gillian said:
That looks so good, but what do you do about the ones that emigrate far and wide or are all the lines above for pre-emigration days? And what about those who came to live in the UK from elsewhere (perhaps you don't have any)?
Click to expand...

I haven't tried using FTA mapping yet (rather an oversight on my part, I know) but I have done something similar to MelG's exercise, although mine's rather less sophisticated and doesn't have the migration lines: I like that idea!

It doesn't really matter if you have places all over the world: with customisable Google Maps you can zoom in or out as you like. As an example, here's a shot of mine showing all its pins, and a zoom into street level. I haven't done anything as complicated as write a script or spreadsheet to do it, I've just added pins in manually over time.
widemap.JPG streetmap.JPG
 
Fascinating stuff. Thank you MelG and SuzanneD. Now I've got something else to try. How does one stretch the hours of the day to give time for everything?
 
I have used this particular map service: http://maps.nls.uk - which has maps from abt 1885 onwards of pretty much all counties in England, Scotland and Wales and which allows you to overlay the older maps on top of the modern map (with vary amounts of transparency) so that you can compare old structures to new structures and find places on one map with their more modern equivalent. - For example some of my family's ancestral farms in Wales are labelled on the older maps, and still visible on the more modern maps.
- it's easier to finds maps that have been scanned properly if you use the "Explore georeferenced maps" option

Like SuzanneD and MelG, (much more like SuzanneD) I have a Google map with pins for all the locations that I know of that my ancestors have lived, although not one that stretches beyond Europe (other than a single pin for an ancestor who I believe died in India) - it doesn't include the emigration of my extended family into Australia, Canada and the US. My older brother started it, and I added to it - so they're both sharable and editable by more than one person.
 
I certainly will, Margery. However, for some reason, I've a feeling you've a long wait ahead of you!
 
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