SNGF -- What Maps Have You Found Recently?

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings tonight is to: 

1)  Do you collect maps of the places where you have ancestors or family?  I do!  I love maps.  And have so many places!

2) Tell us about a recent map find for your genealogy and family history (it could be any time), and where you found it. 

Here’s mine:
Funny how this subject came up today. I just wrote a post about my progress in researching my ancestor, NHO Polly. Part of what I need to do in analyzing the other Polly men in Lewis County, Kentucky where I first find NHO Polly, I need to study some maps. Some Polly men lived on the Cabin Creek watershed and NHO Polly lived on the Kinniconick Creek watershed. One question would be: how close where these two creeks?

It hasn’t been easy locating contemporary maps. These men lived there in 1840. I can locate several maps that are much more current. But normally, creeks don’t move, so these later maps will be useful in answering this question. Here’s what I have found so far.

“Vacation Map,” found on the Wandering Appalachia website. I have marked Cabin Creek with a red arrow and Kinniconick Creek with blue arrows. It is much longer than Cabin Creek. They are not in the same part of the county. 

“Lewis County Topo map,” found on Thing Thai website. This shows a better view of Cabin Creek. This creek flows in the northwest direction. The Kinniconick Creek is not labeled on this map but it flows northeast toward the Ohio River. Between the two watershed is another watershed of Salt Lick Creek.

Next, I need to figure out where the Grassy Fork of the Kinniconick Creek is located. The best topo maps with good detail are 1:24,000 scale. The Kinniconick Creek is so long that it covers at least a couple of topo maps. This Garrison Quadrangle map shows the northern part of Kinniconick Creek.

I found Grassy Branch where it hits the Kinniconick right at the town of Kinniconick. We can see that the area was steep hills with creeks between them. This is from the Vanceburg Quadrangle.

I also found the map below Vanceburg was called Head of Grassy Quadrangle, and discovered Grassy Fork flowing north until it meets the Laurel Fork before running into the Kinniconick. See the blue arrow below. This area is likely the place where NHO’s land was located.

If I revisit the vacation map above, I now know that Grassy Fork is near where it says Laurel. 

Exploring maps is a great way of understanding more about our ancestors and their life. 

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