Cartography - Maps & Gazetteers for Genealogy 🗺️
Genealogists rely on historical cartography to precisely locate ancestral villages, especially those in regions that experienced significant boundary and place-name changes (such as Central and Eastern Europe). Gazetteers (geographical dictionaries) are crucial for finding the historical administrative and religious jurisdictions of a locality, linking a place name to the correct set of records.
Centralized & Academic Collections 🏛️
- David Rumsey Map Collection (Massive, high-resolution global collection)
- Old Maps Online (Portal to search maps from numerous international libraries)
- Library of Congress (LOC) Map Collections (The definitive U.S. national collection)
- Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (PCL - University of Texas at Austin, excellent for Europe)
- Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (LOC - Focus on U.S. towns and cities)
- Persuasive Cartography - The PJ Mode Collection (Cornell Univ.)
- Iowa Digital Library Atlases (Focus on U.S. County Atlases)
- The Changing Borders of Europe (Interactive Historical Map)
- History of Europe (Euratlas Historical Maps)
- HistoryGeo.com (Focus on U.S. land and plat maps - commercial)
German & Central European Gazetteers and Maps 🇩🇪
- Meyers Gazetteer (Crucial German Imperial Gazetteer and Mapping Portal)
- Kartenmeister (Index of Prussian and Eastern German place names with cross-references)
- Historische Landkarten - Deutschland (Historical Maps of Germany)
- Historischen Landkarten Deutschlands und Ländern Europas (Posselt-Landkarten)
- Karte des Deutschen Reichs - Maps of the German Empire
- HARUS-ATLAS 1912 mit 24 Stadtkarten (Pharus-Plan)
- Hessenkarte (Hesse Maps)
- Landkarten Hamburg – Hamburg Maps
- Mapy Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny (WIG) (Polish Military Maps, excellent for pre-WWII Eastern Europe)
Eastern European & Regional Maps 🌐
- Gemeindelexikon der im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Austro-Hungarian Gazetteer and Maps)
- Lithuanian Maps
- Maps of Belarus
- Compare and Contrast Historical Maps of Europe (National Geographic)
- Emerson Kent Maps (General Historical Maps)
Credits
Compiled by Mark Rabideau, Opa & Professional Genealogist.