Include maps to show source of record

LegacyUser

Deb Smith said: Showing maps from various time periods coincident with records would be very helpful! Often I am unsure where the location is compared to the region I am searching for. Showing the record search on a map would be very useful to include or exclude likely ancestors.

Historical maps are not always easy to find, and many boundaries have changed over the centuries leading to locations that no longer exist.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Not sure how this would ever work, Deb. If the location no longer exists surely it would be just as difficult for "FamilySearch" to find it / provide a corresponding map than its users doing the work themselves? Sounds like it would be a mammoth task - especially when some records are so badly indexed the "standard" place name selected by any FamilySearch algorithm (likewise any map) would probably not have any connection to the correct location in any case.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: FamilySearch already has a historical map of political boundaries in 1851 England and Wales https://www.familysearch.org/mapp/#se...

Many other websites will have historical maps of boundaries, and some may be mentioned in the FS Wiki. Some that come to mind:

1. The National Library of Ireland and the website of John Grenham have everything you could want for Irish place names and boundaries. https://www.johngrenham.com/, https://registers.nli.ie/
2. Randy Majors map of US Counties: https://www.randymajors.com/p/maps.html

In recent years FS has put an emphasis on building partnerships with other organisations that already have done what they want, like indexing records, rather than duplicating work.

LegacyUser

Juli said: There is an entire science dedicated to linking old maps with modern geographical coordinates, and an entire category of websites presenting the results. Adding such capabilities to FS's already vast website and holdings would likely not fit within reasonable bandwidth and other resource limits.

My go-to site for old maps of Europe linked to modern ones is Mapire (https://mapire.eu/en/).