Easy Custom Genealogy Maps beyond North America

A few weeks ago, for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver asked readers of his blog to create custom maps of U.S. states and Canadian provinces they had visited, and then to create maps of where their ancestors had lived in some given year.  This was a fun exercise, and it was interesting to see the results.  I was disappointed, however, that I was unable to map several of my ancestors, because they were not living in North America.

Surprisingly, Facebook came to my rescue.  One of my friends posted a link to MapLoco, a site that creates custom world maps of places you've visited.  They're not as detailed as the maps from the first site — you can only indicate visited or not, as opposed to the four levels of visits available on the other site.  The world map site also doesn't have an option to export a graphic file of your map.  Instead, you can generate a URL to a page that shows the countries you marked.  But the site does give me a quick, easy way to map the rest of my ancestors' locations!

For the SNGF exercise I used the locations of my ancestors in 1865, which I had generated the week before, and mapped those in the U.S.  For this new map I took those same locations, added the European ones (the only other continent where I had ancestors in 1865), and clicked those places on the world map site.  The site then automatically generated a URL for my custom map.  Instead of using the URL itself, you can do a screen capture of the map and use the image.  The map the site shows when you use the URL looks like this:

You can see that the title is "Countries I've Visited", and underneath that it lists the countries "I've been to."  There's no way to change the title, which for this map should be "Countries Where My Ancestors Lived in 1865."  The legend on the left indicates Not Visited and Visited.  If you're doing a screen capture, you could easily cut out the "Countries I've Visited" banner, but the text below that is helpful because it lists the countries, which might be difficult to recognize from the map alone.

You actually have two options for images, though.  While you're making the map, it looks like this:

The advantage here is that the Not Visited/Visited legend and "I" text aren't part of the map.  On the other hand, you don't get the list of countries spelled out.

Something I noticed when mapping my ancestors was that due to border changes, I had to fudge a little.  Many of my ancestors lived in the Russian Empire, but that no longer exists.  So I marked the modern countries (Belarus, Latvia, and Ukraine) that control the specific areas where they were.

You might think of that as being a problem relevant mostly to 19th- and early 20th-century research, but I even had the same situation when I created a map of the countries I have visited myself:

Quite a few border changes have occurred during the latter part of the 20th century.  Two of the countries I have visited are the USSR and the Panama Canal Zone.  Neither one exists today.  For the USSR I marked the countries corresponding to the Soviet republics I visited.  But the Canal Zone is just gone, incorporated into the country of Panama, which I visited separately from the Canal Zone.

Hey, wouldn't it be cool if there were a site that could generate maps for any given year, with the appropriate corresponding country borders?

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where My Ancestors Were 150 Years Ago

This week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver suggested people locate their ancestors 150 years ago:

1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 16 May 1865 - 150 years ago.

2)  List your ancestors, their family members, their birth and death years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist?

3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

I discovered I don't have any specific information for where people were living just after the American Civil War officially ended.  I've found most of the U.S. ancestors in the decennial censuses but not the in-between years.  For my Jewish ancestors, who were all still in Eastern Europe, I have no real information on locations but can make educated guesses.

Rachel (Godshalk) Sellers (1809–1894), my 3rd great-grandmother, was probably living in Belvidere, Warren County, New Jersey (where she was in 1860) or in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where she lived in 1870).

Cornelius Godshalk Sellers (1845–1877), my 2nd-great-grandfather, had not yet been mustered out of the army after the end of the Civil War; he mustered out on June 6.  He was somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area.  (I really need to get his unit's morning reports.)

John Fox (1786–1880) and Catherine (Fisher) Fox (1789–1877), my 4th great-grandparents, were living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  I don't know exactly where.

William Owen (~1809–1878) and Sarah Fox (1816–1878), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with their daughter, Catherine Fox Owen (1849–1923), my 2nd-great-grandmother.  I don't know exactly where.

Catherine (Stackhouse) Armstrong (born 1796–1800), my 4th great-grandmother, may or may not have been alive.  I have narrowed down her death to 1860–1870.  If she was alive, she was living somewhere in Burlington County, New Jersey.

Franklin Armstrong (1825–after 1870), my 3rd-great-grandfather, was living in Mansfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey with his son, Joel Armstrong (1849–~1921), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

Abel Amos Lippincott (1825–after 1885) and Rachel (Stackhouse) Lippincott (~1825–after 1885), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were living in Burlington County, New Jersey.  I don't know exactly where.

Sarah Deacon Lippincott (1860–after 1904), my 2nd-great-grandmother, was almost definitely living somewhere in Burlington County, New Jersey.  In the 1860 census she was not yet born and in the 1870 census she was not with her parents, however.

James Gauntt (1831–1889) and Amelia (Gibson) Gauntt (1831–1908), my 2nd-great-grandparents, were almost definitely living in Burlington County, New Jersey.  I don't know exactly where.

Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha (Winn) Dunstan (1837–1884), my 2nd-great-grandparents, were living in one of the suburbs of Manchester, Lancashire, England.  I don't know exactly where.

Zvi (died before 1903) and Esther Mekler, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Kamenets Litovsk, Russia (now Kameniec, Belarus), with their son Simcha Dovid Mekler (died before 1903), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

Bela (died before 1924) (I don't know her maiden name), my 2nd-great-grandmother, who would later marry Simcha Mekler, was probably somewhere in the area of Kamenets Litovsk, but that's just a guess.  She would have been young, maybe between 5–10 years old, and probably living with her parents, but I don't know their names.

Abraham Yaakov (died before 1896) and Sirke (died before 1893) Nowicki, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Porozowo, Russia (now Porozovo, Belarus) with their son Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (~1858–1948), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

Ruven Yelsky (~1838–~1898) and Frieda (Bloom) Yelsky (~1838–~1898), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living in Porozowo, Russia with their daughter Dora Yelsky (~1858–1936), my 2nd-great-grandmother.

Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky and Etta (Cohen) Gorodetsky (died before 1891), my 3rd-great-grandparents, were almost definitely living in Podolia gubernia, Russia, probably near Kamenets Podolsky (now Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine).  Their son Isaac/Avigdor Gorodetsky (died 1925), my 2nd-great-grandfather, may have been with them; I have approximated his birth year to 1864–1868.

Joine (died before 1893) and Chane Etta (died before 1891) Schneiderman, my 3rd-great-grandparents, also were likely living in Podolia gubernia, Russia, probably in the area of Kamenets Podolsky.

Solomon (died before 1909) and Yetta Brainin, my 3rd-great-grandparents, were probably living near Kreuzburg, Russia (now Krustpils, Latvia) with their son Mendel Hertz Brainin (~1862–1930), my 2nd-great-grandfather.

I don't have photographs of any of the residences and don't know if any of them still exist.  (I hardly have any photos of the ancestors in this list!  I think I have photos of eight of them.)  I suspect none of the homes in Eastern Europe are still there, though.

It appears that I had 36 (maybe only 34) ancestors who were alive on May 16, 1865.  The breakdown is:
• 3 4th-great-grandparents
• 18 3rd-great-grandparents
• 15 2nd-great-grandparents

None of my great-grandparents had been born yet.

This was an interesting exercise.  It really pointed out to me how many birth and death years I am lacking for my mother's ancestors.