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From: Odessa Higdon-Crenshaw <>
Subject: [ALBUTLER] Ancestor Locations in Early America
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 03:38:39 -0700 (PDT)


Hi y'all,
Whenever I see folks researching their ancestors in the early days of the USA, I often wonder if they have done their homework to discover where the boundary lines were for states/counties back in the 1700-1800's.
If your ancestors were early settlers, you might need to visit a map site to try to locate your family by the date(s) you have, and then by what the early maps say the boundary was for your research area. You may just find your 'Lost' ancestor.
Why do you need to know about the boundary changes from long ago? Because county boundaries and in many cases state boundary lines changed. For instance, did you know that in the 1700's, Virginia covered a vast amount of the Eastern United States? Most of the (US side) Great Lakes (Huron, Michigan, Erie and Superior) were in Virginia (1781). At one time (1790 and before) many of the Eastern States, including Virginia ran as far (some maps show coast to coast) the Mississippi River
We need to have a working knowledge of maps and boundaries to determine what the country boundaries were for the years in which we are searching for our ancestors. If you do your homework, you will be better able to provide help to those who have volunteered to help you locate information.

A friend owns a book that was published in the 1800's which tells about her ancestors in Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia. It states that the Court House for Augusta County is where Pittsburg is located today. This tells me they might have lived in Augusta County. However, the records were left in Pittsburg when they built the new Court House. She has records of some of her family which states they were in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania but they were included in Augusta County, Virginia. So NEVER let a location stop you from considering a family line.
When you are researching before the 1900's, you need a fair knowledge of the history of our country and its changes in boundary lines. Animap is a wonderful program, and the provider, Goldbug can be found at: http://www.goldbug.com/ (it's not free) You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader and the above site has a link to download that program (free).




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