Thursday, July 10, 2014

Another Genealogy Tool -- And A Proposed Project Idea To "Pay It Forward" (July 10, 2014)


Recently the United States Geological Survey (USGS) made over 178,000 of its survey maps available in a searchable on-line database called the "Historical Topographic Map Explorer." This tool makes available survey maps that go back as far as 1884 and they are searchable by city and town!  [See an item in this week's forthcoming "Saturday Serendipity" for more information and links.

This post is about my visit to the Historical Topographic Map Explorer to see how it works.  In doing so, I fell into a little memory game that strikes me as a potential basis for targeted neighborhood map projects that could become ways for those of us here today to "pay it forward" by providing useful information that might otherwise be easily lost to future generations and future genealogists.  I describe the memory game and project idea below -- with an example.

The screen shot shown above is a portion of a 1967 survey map for the town of Salem Depot, New Hampshire taken from a search for Salem Depot in the Historical Topographic Map Explorer.  I chose Salem Depot out of curiosity because it was a small developing community on the border of Lawrence, Massachusetts in the early 60s and it was not a large city that one would expect to definitely be covered in this database.  I also chose it because my family lived in Salem Depot for about three years (1960-1962).

As a glance at the map section above indicates,  Salem Depot was a residential community in the early 1960s that was expanding with new home developments.  One of the principal home builders at the time was a family-owned construction company that named the streets in its development by using the first names of children and other family members.  We lived in that development at 18 Joseph Road, Salem Depot, NH pictured here.

18 Joseph Rd., Salem, NH (March 2010)

In looking at the 1967 survey map of Salem Depot, I found myself tracing the streets to our development and to the little square that represented our home in 1960 - 1962.  I then found myself digging deep to recall the names of some, but far from all, of the other families that lived in our neighborhood.  I pointed to the squares of their homes and suddenly struck on the idea that probably none of those families are still there and that few if any people in that neighborhood today could say who lived in those houses some 50 or more years ago -- but isn't that information that could be of interest and of use to people researching family histories?  And so the idea for a neighborhood map project took hold and I produced for myself the map shown immediately below.



The annotated map above color codes my identification of our home on Joseph Road and the homes of the Sullivan, Patten, Conner, Grimes and Perrant families who also lived in the neighborhood in the early 1960s.  

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Screen shot of a portion of the 1967 USGS survey map for Salem Depot, NH obtained using the USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer.

Photograph of 18 Joseph Rd., Salem, NH by the author (March 2010).

Annotated USGS map identifying family homes circa 1960 - 1962 by the author. 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew
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10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip about these maps, John. I searched for my childhood hometown but there wasn't one. It must have been too tiny to have been included in the maps. I'm going to search a little more to see if the map of a nearby town extends to our little village. I was happy to find my father's childhood hometown and the smallish town of my maternal grandparents. Thanks again for directing your readers to this wonderful resource.

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  2. John,

    I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-july-11-2014.html

    Have a great weekend!

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    2. As always Jana, thank you for the mention. Much appreciated!!

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  3. John -
    This is a great idea! I would like to do the same thing for my childhood neighborhood in NJ. What program did you use to annotate the map with the color-coded houses? Or did you print it out, annotate, and then scan it. This might be the easiest way for me to do it!

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    1. Hi Wendy! I did exactly as you guessed. I printed the screen shot and clot coded and labeled the homes -- then I scanned it and posted it. If you do your childhood neighborhood, I hope you post it so we can see it. ;-) Thank you for your comment!

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  4. I recognized your map right away. That rail line is now a "rail trail". Your backyard was very close to Canobie Lake. You wouldn't recognize that neighborhood now with all the development along Rt. 28 (Rockingham Road). I'm going to see if I can find my childhood neighborhoods in Beverly and Holden, Massachusetts. They haven't changed much, and can you believe that most of the neighbors still live there?!

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    1. I visited Salem in 2010 and it was amazing the changes in 50 years. ;-) The Granite State Potato Chip company that we used to walk to and buy fresh chips scooped from a cascade of chips that came into the retail area from the production area through a large opening. The chips were freshly made right there and were scooped into large cardboard boxes for like 25 cents each. It was all boarded up and deteriorating in March 2010 -- it almost made me cry. Also, I used to walk through the woods from the edge of our backyard to Canobie Park and I knew every inch of those woods. On Saturday nights in the summer I could lay on the top bunk in my room and watch the Canobie Lake Park fireworks from my bed! I hope you do your childhood neighborhoods and post them on line. Not only will these projects bring back nice memories, they will also preserve information about members of neighborhoods that is being lost with every passing year.

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    2. Yes, most of the neighbors are still there, and I'm going to ask Mom if she has old photos of the old neighborhood. I also miss the Granite State Potato Chip company everytime I drive down Rt. 28. Especially this time of the year when I used to buy a plastic bucket full of chips from that wooden chute, for summer cookouts. I just moved to Manchester from Londonderry, and I have already recorded all the neighbors (names and photos) before we moved. Some of those families have lived on that road in Londonderry since the 1800s!

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  5. Great Map.
    http://thestephensherwoodletters.blogspot.com/

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