Lilian's Tree

Street maps, property maps, town or city maps, all have a place in our ancestors lives. Past maps, overlayed with modern ones, can give us the location of the family home or farm. Looking at street names can lead you to an ancestor’s door, the church where they worshiped or they grave yard, where they now lay. This is a good link to use, for old maps.     http://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/Australia

Have you used maps, in your family tree research? Aren’t they fantastic? Maps have been used for centuries, from the first explores, crude maps to the modern day, satnav. I remember back in the 1960’s or early 1970’s, when either a Gemini or an Apollo astronaut, took a photo of Australia, from space. It was on the front page of the newspaper, with the banner heading. ‘The Mapmakers Got It Right!’ How they would have marvelled at how far we have explored. I first used old land title maps to locate the family land in Kootingal, NSW and being shown the original ones to use. They were cloth like and very heavy, to turn the pages. Now days I search them online.   Looking at the maps for my own home, I can trace back from my small piece, through the original sub-division to the bigger land grant and it is fascinating to see then development of the suburb. There is a feature on the NSW Lands Department website, that allows you to look at your area, now and then you can see...

Today Sue had organised Jeffery Madsen to give a talk on, Creating Maps in Family Stories. While I haven't used maps in stories, they are something I use frequently.  He explained what a map was, why we would use a map and what is the map showing the reader.  Jeffery also explained that by using different types of maps, the reader is able to see the location of a particular place. Sources of maps, copyright and attribution were also covered. We were then given a lesson in how to put maps into our word document. How to manipulate them and how to organise the text. Something for me to play with. It was a very useful and informative talk, from a gentleman, who loves maps. Bye, Lilian