Mapping the travels of our ancestors

[Rod In Sussex]

I would like to produce a map showing the basic movements of my ancestors from across England in the 1800s to London in the early 1900s, then all out again by the 1980s.

Is there a mapping site or some software I could use and could it be layered by census dates etc?

Thanks for any ideas?

Rod

[trish251]

Hi Rod

My husband uses a rather expensive package in his work environment called mapinfo which he says is the best available. If you do a google on mapping software you should find some cheaper options. This one looks interesting (and is shareware). Registering gives additional features ($US50)

http://www.agismap.com/

Trish

[Rod In Sussex]

Thanks Trish,

I will look it up over the weekend when I hope to have some free time

Rod

[alcrighton]

Paul E's recent post on how our ancestors travelled before the railways got me thinking again about an idea I had a while ago and haven't done anything about.

My idea is to produce a map with coloured dots for the different branches of the family located in the different places that they lived at different times and with lines between them showing their movements.  My ancestors came from Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk, Cornwall, Devon & Hertfordshire as well as Scotland and Ireland and converged on the London area in the mid to late 19th century before beginning to spread out again across the country (and in some cases across the world) in the 20th.

I'm sure this is not a new idea and I was woncdering if anyone else has tried doing something similar to this?  If so, have you done this on a computer and if so what software have you used?

Would welcome your input and especially some examples of your work before embarking on mine when I get a spare moment!

Regards,

Al


Moderator Comment: topics merged

[D ap D]

Good posting Alcrighton.

I've just started on this myself, only toying with ideas at the moment though, not put any down onto paper as yet. I think the best for me is to take a separate map for each branch, then use a different colour dot for each generation. Perhaps then a star instead of a dot for my direct line.

I will then end up with several maps, but plotting the family members for that branch will be easier.

Also printing the maps onto a transparent will enable me to place several on top of each other to see the general flow of movement.

I'll just have to make sure that the scale is always the same.

I'd like to hear what other people think.

D

[Paul E]

I wonder if Powerpoint would fit the bill here?  A succession of slides would produce something akin to an animation - worth investigating?   Powerpoint has the ability to be savd as html.

Of course, if your ancestors came from a small Norfolk village or hamlet, it would potentially be a pretty poor animation...

Paul

[suttontrust]

I like the powerpoint idea (or whatever software you use - some of us don't use MS) but it would be a lot of work.  Fun, though.

[Headbanger Veron]

I would love to do this and had thought about it, but not got much further than that apart from finding a blank map online to start with! Powerpoint sounds a good idea. If anyone has tried something practical, I'd be interested to hear what works.

Cheers Veron

[alcrighton]

I'd thought of Powerpoint too and even had a bit of a play around that I've just updated (attached).  I like Paul's idea of using the Save as HTML option from Powerpoint.  This is just the kind of thing I need to get my web page going - watch this space 

Let me know what you think of this first effort - looks a bit crowded to me even though it's only the line of one of my grandparents with 4 genreations in total.  I chose this branch to start with as they all neatly fit below an East-West line drawn through Watford (unadvetureous lot  ).

Keep the ideas coming.

Al