How to Connect Google Maps to Your Family History

I have recently been looking more seriously at how useful Google Street View would be in my family history research. There are many mapping tools available to the genealogist but Google Street View allows the user a unique way of seeing locations, enabling them to virtually 'stand' in a street and see what is there. Genealogists can use this as an opportunity to quickly (and inexpensively) connect documented individuals in their archives to the real world through the places they frequented.

Many of the documents I have in our family archive contain address information so I started out searching Google Street View using a 1942-44 address for Blanche Burright. Entering Blanches address into Google Maps, I was taken directly to the New York street where she lived. Dragging the Street View icon (Orange Man) onto the map, I found myself 'standing' in the street. It took a bit of moving around to find the actual house as the address that Google finds is not always the one you are looking directly at, but with a bit of zooming and panning I was able to use actual house numbers to find the location. See the house here (it's the one with the black framed bow window): 141 W 94th St

You can extend this idea by combining Google Street View functionality with the 'Get Directions' option in Google Maps. Having found the house Blanche lived in I added her 1940's work address as a destination. This initially gave me a map view with a route marked on it in blue. Dragging the Street View icon onto the marked route I was dropped back into the streets of New York and could follow the blue line route between where Blanche lived and where she worked. It was an interesting jaunt through Central Park to 42nd Street. Being New York, many of the buildings are ones she would have seen back in the 1940's although the owners have certainly changed many times.

Apart from the novelty value of being able to travel through cities without leaving your computer desk, Google Street View has practical uses for the Genealogist. At one level it gives the user the opportunity to 'visit' places ancestors lived and worked, quickly and easily, in (kind of) real time. It gives old diaries and letters a real world context, even if you are unable to visit the location in person. It makes your family's past more tangible.

At another more practical level it can be a useful tool for helping Genealogists plan research trips. In the past you would plan a visit to a city and hope that the buildings you might be looking for are still there. Sometimes they were and other times they had been cleared out to make way for a store, or new apartment building. Using Google Street View you would be able to see if a building or other location is still there and plan your trip accordingly, saving valuable research time.

The only drawback to Google Street View is the coverage. Whilst Google is adding more and more views all the time, once you get out of the major towns and cities the coverage is minimal to none. You also need to remember that the Internet can sometimes be wrong. As with all research you should double check your search results before claiming that an ancestor lived in a specific house. Be aware that occasionally street names are used more than once in the same city and small differences in street names can make miles of difference on the ground. Husking Peg Lane is not the same as Husking Peg Road for instance.

Overall Google Street Maps is a fun and useful tool for the Genealogist. As with all Internet tools you need to apply caution and fact checking to your search results before making claims. Finding out that actual locations frequented by your ancestors still exist, makes family research come alive in a way that archives and documents can not. Even if you are sitting at your computer hundreds of miles away.

Sources:
1. http://maps.google.com/
2. O.U.Burright Diary 1942-1943