My Trails into the Past

In exploring ways to visually show the migration route of an ancestor, I have chosen an easy way. Just use the directions function on Google Maps. Start with their starting point and add each leg of their migration to the directions until you arrive at the last place they settled. Hork Family . Here is an example. My great-grandfather emigrated from Germany and the first place I locate him in records is in Joliet, Illinois when he married my great-grandmother. I entered Joliet, Illinois in the get directions box. To choose another direction, you’ll have to exchange Joliet’s position to the top using the little arrows to the right. He next lived in Aurora, Illinois, where he obtained his U.S. citizenship. So, I add Aurora as the next destination. While you do this, keep track of the number of miles between locations. It is 23 miles between Joliet and Aurora by automobile. You might want to move the route to make it most direct, as our ancestors did not have interstate highways and Goo...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - Time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Here is our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing :  1) Identify an ancestral home address ( preferably one with a street address...) for one of your ancestral families (You do know where they lived, don't you? If not, consult the 1900 to 1940 US Census records, or City Directories). 2) Go to Google Maps ( http://maps.google.com ) and enter the street address (and city/town if necessary - usually you can pick from a list) for your selected ancestral home. 3) Look at the street map, the satellite map, and the street view. Zoom in or out, or manipulate the image as you wish. 4) Tell us or show us your map images in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post. Please leave a link in a comment to this post. 5) Do you have maps and street view pictures for all of your known ancestral homes? Here’s mine: I d...