Yesterday, I shared results of my most recent look at maps in connection with an ancestor’s life. That map was definitely to provide an overview of the “big picture.”

Most of the time, though, tracking ancestors requires using maps that cover way fewer square miles, so today I’d like to share a few ways that I’ve successfully use maps in my genealogical research.

1. Last week, I shared an image of one of my favorite types of local maps, which were first appeared around 1880. Publishing companies had reps wandering around rural areas, plotting out where local families lived. They created a kind of plat map, although these maps don’t show dimensions of property holdings. However, they do show town lines and neighbors, which is great for building a FAN club.And, if you think your ancestors lived in a place to be too small to appear in one of these map books, you’re wrong!Villages don’t get much smaller than Charlotte and Meddybemps in Washington County, Maine:

If I wanted to, I could now look for land deeds for my Charles Stewart and his neighbors that are recorded in metes and bounds style (from the oak tree 300 feet to the corner of John Smith’s property. . . ) and use a software program like DeedMapper to see the boundaries of Charles’ property and perhaps accurately show how Mr. Bridges’ land joined his.

Depending on how accurately the metes and bounds were measured and recorded, I might be able to build out a good-sized neighborhood for Charlotte and/or Meddybemps.

2. I’ve also researched families who lived in PLSS (Public Land Survey States) also known as the Township, Range and Section system. The land system uses a standardized grid to identify each section of land, which may be subdivided into halves or even fourths.

The government description:

The PLSS typically divides land into 6-mile-square townships. Townships are subdivided into 36 one-mile-square sections. Sections can be further subdivided into quarter sections, quarter-quarter sections, or irregular government lots. PLSS was created to divide parcels of public land; it’s not useful for the accurate location of points and shouldn’t be confused with coordinate systems like latitude/longitude, UTM, or the State Plane Coordinate System.

By looking at the grid pattern and reading your deed, it’s possible to determine the exact piece of property your ancestor owned.

There are thirty states that at least partially use the PLSS, mostly in the South, Midwest and West. I’ve used land deeds from Hempstead County, Arkansas to figure out, in person, the land which was owned by some of my husband’s ancestors.

3. A more general use of maps, but one I couldn’t do without, are maps showing county boundary changes that align with census years. The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is free online, but I prefer my hard copy of Thorndale and Dollarhide’s book Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses. 1790-1920. I use that book all the time to figure out where to find deeds and probate records for ancestors who lived in places like Howard County, Missouri. The early guys there in 1818 lived in four different counties, but never moved. The county lines sure did, though, as settlers flooded in.

4. Of course, in larger cities, street maps have been published for hundreds of years. Sometimes, a historic map published in a particular year is needed if a researcher can’t find a particular street. For example, if I were looking for Second Street in Passaic, New Jersey on a 2026 map, I would be stymied. That’s because it is now called Market Street and it sits between the still-named First Street and Third Street. Check out my list of where to find map collections.

5. Finally, don’t overlook the Sanborn insurance maps that will help with those larger towns and cities. I found my childhood home in the Passaic collection with a general schematic of the shape of the house and learned a few new details about modifications that were made to the home through the years.

Bonus Tip: I’ve even used a map to determine how far away Martin Miller would have gone courting Catherine Whitmer. I didn’t know who his father was and needed to separate out the German and English Millers, determine where John Whitmer’s family lived and then focus on the Millers living closest to the Whitmers. It worked! Martin was the son of Jacob Miller who lived less than five miles away from the Whitmers.
Before the automobile, a young man could travel about five miles each way to go courting and be back at home by dark the same day.

There are also early maps showing America’s first roads and highways, railroad routes and even water travel routes. There are maps for just about any kind of research location.

I hope that I’ve encouraged researchers who haven’t added maps to their genealogy toolboxes to investigate the kinds of maps that are available for the areas in which their ancestors lived.

Have you ever used Sanborn maps for your genealogy research? These maps were created in the late 19th and early 20th century by insurance companies to determine the likelihood of a fire destroying a building.

If these were for fire insurance companies, of what genealogical value are they? Lots!

Why? Although not often created for small villages, towns and cities usually had detailed maps.

On each map we would find the exact street address of the building – which might not still be standing today.

The layout of the town block is shown, which includes neighboring buildings and the businesses maintained in them, ranging from shops to churches. It also shows where on each lot the building was located.

I chose Passaic, New Jersey to provide an example of the maps. The map dates range from 1893 to 1951 in the Library of Congress online collection. There are later maps in the 1970s which aren’t online yet.

There are seven images in the 1884 series, beginning with a general map of the downtown area:

The map can be enlarged in the LOC viewer.

More detailed smaller street areas are found in the other six images:

Look at the lower portion of the above map that shows Main Avenue intersecting with Gregory Avenue and becoming River Road.

A number of years ago, Route 21 went through the area and Main Avenue’s street changed direction a bit to accommodate the highway:

The area today remains somewhat industrial with some businesses.

In 1900, Passaic was a growing immigrant city, full of new factory workers from Europe. While studying my own house history, I’ve determined that my childhood home was built about 1899 and first appears in the 1900 census.

By 1910, there were 90 (!) maps covering the city of Passaic and my house at 49 Summer Street is included on Sheet 72:

I’ve added an arrow where my house was/still is standing today.

Here is an enlargement of my house:

The yellow arrow is pointing to our front, wraparound porch. The orange arrow is pointing to a small 6-foot area on the back of the house. That was our kitchen pantry and I always wondered if it was original to the house. I still am not sure, but tend to think that it was since this map was created when the house was only 10 years old.

The small circles on the porch and house are where the entrances were. It also appears that there was a door in the top right corner. By my lifetime, that was a window and a larger area in that corner was my parents’ bedroom.

I’ve added some notes to the drawing:

The front of the house facing the street was on the left. My bedroom was the rectangle I completed that contains the “2 1/2” note. The front door opened to a hallway that had an entrance to my room, stairs that went to the second floor and at the back of the stairs was the door that went down into the cellar.

Our bathroom, which had a sink, toilet and tub/shower is drawn in at the bottom. The kitchen was adjacent to it, but the top left corner is somewhat curious.

Apparently, in 1910 there was a small room with a door to the yard and an opening into the main part of the house. By my lifetime, that whole section plus the lines I added for interior walls had become my parents’ bedroom. The back door was replaced by a window. Unusual for the time, my parents had a walk in closet!

The dark line dividing our lot from the house next door was the middle of a sloping cement alley way, probably for rain drainage.

By the way, the workshop became our garage and the doors were barn style, with the inside “lock” being a wooden slat that slid down into a wooden holder, the kind you’d you on barn doors.

If you are wondering about the strange configuration of our house, I believe it’s because a photographer lived upstairs early on. The rooms that my Nana lived in upstairs were more traditional. The downstairs area was likely where he took photos and perhaps developed them in the small room at the top right or in the area that became my parents’ closet.

The large lot across the street was a horse stable in 1910, but some years later became the two u-shaped apartment buildings I remember. The area in the middle where the structure is located is where the grassy area is today. My house is the red pin at the bottom.

In the 1920s and 1930s, my grandparents owned Central Market company, a butcher shop, located at 684 Main Avenue in Passaic.

Here is the building today, which is home to the Mini-Mart on the right:

Here is the butcher shop back in the day:

Here is the Sanborn map from 1935:

684 Main Avenue actually has an A and a B, both marked “S” (store or shop?) and the meat market seems to have used both those spaces.

The Sanborn map collection is one of the coolest resources I’ve found! There is so much that can be learned from them. Use the link at the beginning of the post to search for your own town in the Library of Congress Collection.