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The
following LINKS
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LINKS
to the countries in which our direct ancestors were either
born, married, or died. |
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Successful genealogical research often hinges on identifying the
localities in which our ancestors lived.
Thus one must fully realize that resources which enhance our knowledge
of the places inhabited by our ancestors are almost as important as their
names. Once we know the vicinity, we
are in a better position to consult the records and histories in an effort to
piece together the lives of our fore-bearers.
As such, the primary purpose of these web pages is to provide you with
a clearer picture of places we’ve identified as the ancestral locations of
our direct ancestors. As
you explore this area of our website you will find that we address each place
with a separate and distinct page about each Country, State, and county, (or
its equivalent). Within each county
page we have attempted to address many of the specific places, or what we
refer to as the gen-sites identified during our research. These gen-sites may be as broad as a city
or town, or a specific as the location of a home-site. In addition, you will also find the surnames
of persons who lived within the specified ancestral locations, as well as
links to additional resources that will assist with your research of the
locality. |
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Denterming ancestral locations
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HOW TO FIND THE ANCESTRAL LOCATION
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To
find information about an ancestor, you need to determine at least the
country the ancestor lived in for an event such as birth, christening,
marriage, or death. These suggestions may help you identify where your
ancestor lived: 1.
Start from what you know. If you are confident about where one
ancestor lived, start with that ancestor and work back to the next
generation. U.S.
Censuses from 1850 on are a great place to start, as they contain
birthplaces for everyone in the household.
Federal Census documents from the 20th century also include
immigration years. In earlier
censuses, children's birthplaces and ages can give you an approximate
immigration year. Keep going back
through census years until you discover an ancestor born outside of the
United States. 2. Search for birth details by checking
cemeteries,
obituaries,
military
records, immigration
and naturalization documents and most importantly birth,
marriage
and death
records for mention of a hometown or county. Use census discoveries to find
immigration details in passenger lists. More recent lists may include a birthplace
and the address of a close relative back home. Earlier lists can point you to friends and
family from the same area who arrived on the same
ship. Survey previous research, and
see what others have listed. For
example at FamilySearch™ your computer will search the Ancestral
File, the International Genealogical Index, and other Web sites that may
contain information about your ancestors.
3.
Find a place where one or more members of the family lived, and look
in the records of that place for members of the family. You may find parents
living with a child, or you may find information about the parents in a
child's record. Also look beyond traditional
records. Church
records can mention births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, hometowns and
more. And an address from a census can lead you to nearby churches in city
directories. Land
records can help you pinpoint churches close to rural relatives. If you
hit a “brick wall” research someone else.
Records of an ancestor's sibling, cousin or parent could lead you to
the hometown you're looking for. 4. If your ancestor immigrated to the United States and you are unsure of the country he or she came from, click Tracing Immigrant Ancestors. |
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MAPPING THE ANCESTRAL
LOCATION
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It is said that approximately 80% of all
information has a locational element. When it comes
to family history this rises to 100%. Ask
yourself the question "what single fact connects every
single event in every single family tree everywhere in the world?"
Answer every event took place somewhere. This can be cemetery data, battle records,
birth, marriage, work, census, parish, county, journey, disembarkation,
hospitalization, incarceration (mental hospital and prison), disaster and
criminal records. Any record, in fact,
that has a locational element. One
can hardly conduct thorough, meaningful research on any family line without
incorporating the use of maps in some significant way. Find maps online is easy and there is an
abundance of them to use. Maps are
such interesting and exciting sources of information, and come in so many
varieties that their study and use could become an avocation in and of
itself. This section of the web page
will show you some mapping sites we like to use for genealogical
research. We believe that all are
useful in one's quest to discover early family origins. Below are some examples of Maps, Gazetteers, and Other Helpful Resources for Researching
Locations. These web sites comprise
only a small portion of what is available for researchers interested
in learning more about the areas in which their ancestors lived. If the list below doesn’t contain what you
are looking for, we suggest you try Odden’s
Bookmarks, which contains links to more than 10,000 cartographic sites. |
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OUR FAVORITE MAP & ATLAS PAGES
(For
Locating Gen-Sites) |
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United Kingdom ·
Ordnance Survey, Britain's
mapping agency ·
Ordnance
Survey Open Data (UK) ·
ScotlandsPlaces - use the
mapping in the website to both define and refine your
search. World Locations · Bing Maps (N.A., World, Europe) (good for copies) ·
MSRMaps ·
MSN Maps
(N.A., World, Europe) ·
Maps
– Family Search
Research Help ·
Ancestry.com
- Maps, Atlases & Gazetteers $ ·
United
Nations—Cartographic Section ·
Panoramic Maps
Collection (Library of Congress) ·
Perry Castaneda Library Map
Collection ·
The American
Geographical Society Library ·
Library of Congress (Geography & Map Collection) Historical Maps
& Atlases (World Countries) ·
An Atlas of The German
Empire (1883) – Search the gazetteer, for a town or village to find reference to
a map section that can be used to narrow the search down to a single section
of the large complex map. ·
Topographic Maps of Germany
– pre
World War II |
U.S.A. ·
National Atlas of the United States ·
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Home Page
U.S.A.
Historical Maps & Atlases ·
Morse's 1845 North
American Atlas ·
U.S.
History Maps (Wikimedia) North America
·
National Atlas of Canada – About 350,000 Canadian place names, including
English, French, and Indian variants. |
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OUR FAVORITE GAZETTEERS
(For
Locating Gen-Sites) A gazetteer
is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for
information about places and place names (see: toponymy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas.[1]
It typically contains information concerning the geographical
makeup of a country,
region, or continent
as well as the social statistics and physical features, such
as mountains,
waterways,
or roads. Family
historians encounter many place names that were once important to the family
being researched. Over the centuries,
names of provinces, counties, districts, towns, rivers, and even mountains
may have changed. As such knowing the
current spelling and location of a place
will be of great assistance to any genealogist. Numerous gazetteers about the United States
as well as other countries of the World are accessible online. Therefore we suggested that you make use of
the following website-links if you are looking for a village, fort, church,
creek, lake, mountain, or any other place you may come upon during your
family research. |
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Standard
Finder can be of assistance to researchers in determining proper spellings of
locations and, |
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checking if
locations exist as well as determining alternate name spellings/variants to
expand research. |
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Germany
For
more on this topic, see Germany in our “Internet
Resources” section. ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, & Regions in Germany ·
East and West
Prussia Gazetteer ·
Lists of German communities
by state & county ·
German & Polish place
names - Index
contains Polish and previous German names of localities situated in Poland
and Russia. Also some names of places
from former Saxony now in Poland and Silesian now in Germany. ·
German
Gazetteers - ProGenealogists United Kingdom
For
more on this topic, see United Kingdom in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
List of places in the United Kingdom -
Wikipedia · Directory of Cities and Towns in United Kingdom ·
Old Maps,com.UK
Gazetteer - Selecting a place from counties
as they were back in the mid 19th century will show the historical map for
that area. ·
Gazetteer
of British Place Names – 50,000 entries that includes the historic county as well as modern
administrative districts to determine what county each place was originally
in, and where records might be found today. ·
A Topographical
Dictionary of England - Contains
detailed topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England. ·
GENUKI Church Gazetteer –
This
database contains the approximate location of the parishes that existed
around 1837. ·
GENUKI 1891 Census
Gazetteer ·
This
database contains the names of places
encountered in the 1891 census for England, Wales and the Isle of Man. ·
Registration Districts: England
& Wales (1837–1974) These
pages show composition of the civil registration districts. There is also an Alphabetical List of Districts
and an Index of Place Names for the
whole of England and Wales. · List of places in Northern Ireland ·
A Topographical
Dictionary of Scotland - Contains detailed
topographical accounts of places, parishes and counties in England. ·
ScotlandsPlaces - enter a place
name or a coordinate to search across different national databases. Ireland
·
The Ireland Atlas / Database ·
A Topographical Dictionary of
Ireland ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, and Regions in Ireland
Switzerland
For
more on this topic, see Switzerland in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, &
Regions in Switzerland |
United States
For
more on this topic, see United States in our
“Internet Resources” section. ·
U.S.
& Territories (USGS-GNIS Place Name
Search) This site allows you to search
among over 2 million place names. ·
List
of cities, towns, villages in the U.S. - Wikipedia ·
Directory of Cities, Towns, in
United States ·
U.S. Gazetteer (Census Bureau) ·
US Cities & State Gazetteers (US
Home Town Locator) ·
Geographic
Reference Library –
Ancestry.com World
For
more on this topic, see World in our “Internet
Resources” section. ·
Getty
Thesaurus of Geographic Names · JRC Fuzzy Gazetteer - Search over 7,000,000 place names using a phonetic transcription of the place. The search is spelling tolerant, with more emphasis on the vowels. This site can be helpful when tracing obsolete or misspelled places. ·
Directory of Cities and
Towns in World ·
Foreign Place Names
Search (USGS-GNIS) ·
A Dictionary, Geographical,
Statistical, & Historical 1.
Volume 1: AA - Caspe 2.
Volume 2: Caspian Sea - Iona 3.
Volume 3: Ionian Islands - Poole 4.
Volume 4: Poonah
– Zytomiers ·
JewishGen Gazetteer - is a database containing the names of all localities in the 54
countries of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. France
For
more on this topic, see France in our “Internet
Resources” section. · Administrative divisions of France ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, and Regions in France
·
Dictionnaire des Postes aux Lettres – A gazetteer, published in 1754, of
post offices in France and Belgium. Canada
·
Geographical Names of Canada ·
Gazetteers of Canada
(English-language) ·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, and Regions in Canada
Netherlands
·
Directory
of Cities, Towns, & Regions in Netherlands
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Researching Countries
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If you
are attempting to perform research on ancestors from countries other that the
United States or Europe you should consider starting at this website that is
sponsored by Family Search. This Wiki
offers Free family history research advice for genealogy
research by family historians, like yourself. Here you can learn from over 37,440 articles
about how to research in every corner of the world. From the list below, click on a country of
your choice. Within the countries,
information is arranged by topic. You
can learn about important record types, research methods, and repositories,
And this free online source is up to date with most current websites and new
of record availability. |
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Internet resources
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This
search engine may provide
you with additional |
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information
to assist with your research about this
topic. |
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General
Resources
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·
Cyndi’s
List – Maps and Geography
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·
Geographic
Aids – Family Search
·
Ancestry.com
Library—Geography Section $ ·
Google Earth – Info. about
Blogs, Newsletter, Tutorials |
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FRANCE
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GERMANY
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·
German Genealogy Info. & Resources |
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Genealogy.com:
Places/Geographic, Europe |
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SWITZERLAND
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Switzerland
Genealogy links - Swiss geneology |
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UNITED KINGDOM
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·
United Kingdom and Ireland - rootsweb.com ·
GENUKI:
UK & Ireland Genealogy ·
UK
Genealogy - The Portal for UK Family Research |
·
Cyndi's List - United Kingdom
& Ireland Index ·
IGI
Batch Numbers-British Isles & North America |
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UNITED STATES
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·
Linkpendium
> Genealogy > USA ·
The American History and Genealogy
Project |
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world
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·
Africa – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Antarctica
Gazetteers - Wikipedia ·
Asia – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Asia Gazetteers - Wikipedia ·
Australasia – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Australia
Gazetteers - Wikipedia |
·
Europe – National Mapping Organisation Network
·
North America – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
South America – National Mapping Organisation Network ·
Worldwide Gazetteers
- Wikipedia |
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Free Records
& Databases
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All of the records and databases we’ve collected
are FREE and can be accessed and searched online without
having to pay for a subscription. We
have divided our collected into 14 record types specific to the United
States. The Land Records, Gazetteers & Maps records should be useful in locating locations within the United
States. We try not to list any sites that have only a few records for the
purpose of getting you to a website that will charge a fee to actually see
the record beyond just a name. |
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This Link will take
you to our |
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collections of FREE Records. |
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Genealogy
Reference Library
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The
following Link
will take you to our library of genealogy reference books. Here you will find atlases and gazetteers that will be
of great assistance in learning more about a wide variety of locations
through out the world |
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This Link will take you to our |
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collections of
reference books. |
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Image galleries
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During our research we have collected images and
photographs that are of general interest to a variety of localities. Some of them are presented on this website
because we believe they tend to provide the reader with additional
information which may aid in the understanding of our ancestors past lives. |
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Use the following LINK
to ascertain whether |
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we have any images that may interest you. |
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Use the power of Google™ to find more interesting images about
this topic. A Click on this button will link you to the Google Images
Search page. |
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Enter
the topic you are searching in the box and click “Search Images”. At the “Images”
display page you will see the image, as well as the website of which it
is associated. |
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About this webpage
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CONTACT INFORMATION
We do
like to hear from others who are researching the same people and surnames. We
need your help to keep growing! So
please Email
photos, stories, and other
appropriate information about this topic. RULES OF USE We only ask that if you have a personal website
please create a link to our Home Page. -- This webpage was
last updated on -- 01
January 2012 |
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