Announcing a new database: HistoryGeo!

We are excited to announce the addition of a new historical research map service called HistoryGeo.com. HistoryGeo caters to history, genealogy, and land researchers and at its heart, displays a single, searchable map containing nearly 9 million original U.S. landowners. This particular map is part of what HistoryGeo calls its First Landowners Project, and it contains coverage of 21 states.

HistoryGeo maps the progression of settlement across the U.S. The First Landowners Project presents landowners from Ohio down to Missouri, and south and east to Alabama, then proceeds to map most states to the west. The value to genealogists and historians is twofold:

First, it establishes the current location of past landowner's parcels, enabling you to find ancestral lands. Second, it gives researchers an instant view of a subject's neighbors and that frequently reveals clues about extended family. Migration across the U.S. often occurred among family groups, church groups, or even communities as the promise of cheaper land and greener pastures proved irresistible. Moreover, in the 19th century, most people found their marriage prospects within only a few miles of their home. As such, you will often find these families living near one another in HistoryGeo's maps.

In addition to the First Landowners Project, HistoryGeo's Antique Maps Project provides coverage of thousands of antique maps and atlases. These maps are not limited to the Central and Western U.S. They include hundreds of counties along the eastern seaboard and even contain Cherokee allotment maps in northeastern Oklahoma. Like the First Landowner's project, the Antique Maps project continues to grow in both scope and functionality and will do so for many years to come. The videos below show how to utilize both the First Landowners and Antique Maps Projects. 

If you'd like to learn more about HistoryGeo, please visit MetroU to sign up for one of the upcoming training sessions. Tens of thousands of researchers have found their ancestors in HistoryGeo's maps. What discoveries await you in this exciting new view of frontier settlement?

First Landowners Project: Search a database of nearly 9 million original landowners across 21 states by last name of the original landowner, by town name, by cemetery name, or by latitude and longitude. You can also learn about an area's county boundary history with just a click and learn how to attach photos, web pages, or other research to points on maps.

Antique Maps Project: This map/image viewer is enables you to annotate and add metadata, image links, and web links to a marker that you can place anywhere on any map in the Antique Maps collection.

States covered by First Landowners Project: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin (Texas is completed; other states listed have been mapped to the degree of about 90% of what the Bureau of Land Management has indexed).