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Genealogy Research with Maps: FINDING RECORDS

A guide to using maps available at The New York Public Library and elsewhere for genealogy research.

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Historical maps can help genealogists and historians discover where people lived in space and time. This is useful because street names and numbers change, as do the boundaries of counties, properties, and parishes. Looking at maps also helps researchers locate the places where records were created: courts, churches, schools, hospitals, and places of employment, for instance. Of course, not all of those records survive, but clues to their possible current location may be found in maps.

EXAMPLES

A historical map showing Waverly Place and Gay Street, with a red box highlighting a section.Composite image showing a clipping of a census page, a clipping from a business directory, and a newspaper funeral announcement for Elisa Gerken.

Left to right: Plate 35, Part of Section 2, Atlas of the city of New York, Borough of Manhattan / G.W. Bromley, 1899. (NYPL Digital Collections); ED 100, Page 20, Manhattan, New York, 1900 US Federal Census; Phillip’s Business Directory of New York City, 1899; Death notice for Ella Gerken, New York Herald, June 22nd, 1894, p.1

Historical maps can show us where our ancestors lived at a particular point in time. Locating a correct historical address helps researchers find information about people, and a map can confirm that a place existed and can verify information found in other records.

For instance, a plate from a fire insurance map updated to 1902 describes the location of 135 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, New York, home to one Carsten Gerken, a liquor dealer who had his business on the ground floor of the building, entrance at 77 Sixth Avenue. This address is confirmed by the 1900 censuscity directories, and newspapers.

We can see that 135 Waverly Place is on the corner of Sixth Avenue, useful when searching the census by address, looking for historical photographs of a building, or researching a building's history.

Identifying changes in street names and building numbers

Map highlighting plots along Christopher Street, Gay Street, Sixth Avenue, and Waverley Place with a red rectangle.Section of a neighborhood map with labeled properties and highlighted area.

Left to right: Plate 59, Maps of the city of New-York.[Perris & Browne], 1857-62.; Plate 35, Manhattan land book of the city of New York. G. W. Bromley, 1955.

Why is this important? Well, in a place like New York City, street names and building numbers change all the time. The building located at 77 Sixth Avenue in 1853 is not the same building there now, which was built in 1877 , that is in1953 identified as 385 Avenue of the Americas. Note also, the change in the spelling of "Waverly."

When searching for ancestors in a particular place and time, researchers have to be certain they have the right location. The 1853 location of the address 77 Sixth Avenue would today be in a different location.

A town may be part of a particular county one year, and part of another the next, as county boundaries are redrawn, renamed, or abolished due to annexation. Researchers can use maps to work out exactly which county a town was in at a given point in time.

Records of interest to genealogists—birth, marriage, and death records, or wills and deeds, for instance—are often kept at the county level. To find those records, it helps if one knows where and in what jurisdiction your ancestor’s life events occurred.

A historical map highlighting regions of Tompkins and Tioga counties with a red rectangle around Newton and New Elmira.The image is an old, colored map showing parts of Schuyler, Tompkins, Chemung, and Tioga counties. It focuses on administrative and geographical boundaries, with various towns and villages labeled throughout. Bold lines demarcate county borders, while thinner lines depict roads and rivers. The map features the town of Elmira, highlighted with a red box, located in Chemung County. Other nearby towns include Big Flats, Catlin, and Horse Heads to the west, and Owego and Waverly to the south-east. Different shades of beige and light green represent the landscape, with intricate black lines and labels.

Left to right: Map of the state of New York : compiled from the latest authorities (1833); Rand, McNally & Co.'s New York (1888)

For instance, Elmira, the county seat of Chemung County, New York, shown in the 1888 map above right, was originally named Newtown, part of Tioga County, as described in the 1833 map above left. Chemung County was created from a part of Tioga County in 1836. Knowing this impacts where genealogists go to look for records created in Elmira: are they in the Tioga County clerk’s office, or the Chemung County clerk’s office?

Hypothetically, an individual could live all their life in the same town but have records of their birth, marriage, and death recorded in three different counties. Historical maps help researchers find those records.

map of the local boundaries of the Protestant Episcopal Churches of the City of New York (1850) describes parishes and churches, clues that may lead to the discovery of records describing baptisms, marriages, or burials. Helping genealogists find records associated with a house of worship is something that librarians assist with daily at the NYPL Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy. 

The image is a historical map showcasing several rectangular sections outlined in red, each representing different areas or landmarks. The map includes blocks divided into smaller parcels, each shaded in various pastel colors such as pink, yellow, blue, and green, indicating different properties or land uses. Major streets are labeled at the top and sides, including "Houston Street," "Bowery," "Stanton Street," "Forsyth Street," and "Eldridge Street." Key areas highlighted in red rectangles include "Friends' Cemetery," "Presbyterian Cemeteries," "German Mission Church," "Cemetery," "Baptist Church," and "Protestant Church." The parcels are neatly arrayed and line the streets, with some sections labeled as factories, churches, or cemeteries.

Map bounded by Houston Street, Allen Street, 1st Street, Essex Street, Rivington Street, Bowery, Plate 33 / 1857-1862

Plate 33 of Perris and Brown's Maps of the city of New-York of 1857 describes several churches and cemeteries on the Lower East Side. Maps record physical changes as buildings come and go, and they also chart changing demographics. A neighborhood populated by parishioners of the Dutch Reformed Church one year may be Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, or Jewish a few years later. Congregations move from place to place.

The Presbyterian church shown in the bottom right-hand corner of Plate 33 was founded as the Stanton Street Reformed Church in 1843, became the Stanton Street Presbyterian Church in 1849, and was consecrated as a synagogue in 1860 (New York Times, 8/8/1860, p.2). The New York City Organ Project is a site dedicated to recording the installation of organs in the five boroughs, and includes invaluable information about the movement of congregations (and their organs).

In 1851, a city ordinance banned new burials south of 86th Street in Manhattan. Eventually, thousands of bodies were removed from Manhattan cemeteries and brought to cemeteries in Queens and Brooklyn. Determining the location of bodies of ancestors once interred in Manhattan is another genealogy exercise that librarians in the Milstein Division can also assist with, and historical maps help researchers find those burial sites.

Hooker’s 1824 Pocket Plan of the City of New York describes the city’s wards, streets, and cross streets. Originally designed to help visitors find their way around the city, Hooker’s map can be now be used in conjunction with records that describe addresses, like a city directory, to explore census records that describe only wards but not streets.

This image is an antique map titled "Hooker's New Pocket Plan of the City of New York" from 1824. It features a bird’s-eye view of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The map is detailed, with a street grid layout and labeled wards, shown in various pastel shades such as pink, green, blue, and yellow. The streets are meticulously numbered and named, with the city boundaries extending from the lower tip of Manhattan to just above 14th Street. Surrounding geographic features, like the Hudson and East Rivers, are also indicated. In the left section, there are lists detailing places of public worship, banks, public offices, and other facilities. The text is finely printed in black ink. The map has a weathered appearance, with brownish discolorations and visible fold marks indicating it was used and folded multiple times.
Hooker's new pocket plan of the city of New York / compiled & surveyed by William Hooker, A.C.S.A., hydrographer & engraver, 1824

For instance, if an individual is recorded in a city directory as living on Spring Street, we can use Hooker's map to see what ward that address may have been in at a particular census time, or to locate records of the individual’s property taxes. The map describes the names of historical landmarks like the fortress Castle ClintonBowling Green, the hospital Belle Vue, and numerous long-forgotten theatres and museums. This information provides color and context to our family histories, and opens up further avenues of research into the Library’s collections.

In addition to a directory of government offices, schools, libraries, hospitals, newspapers, and so on, Hooker's map also includes "Places of Public Worship," "Public Buildings in the Park," and "Daily Public Journals." Here's a sample of records, transcriptions of records, and digitized historical newspapers at the NYPL that are identified by name in the map:

"Places of Public Worship"

"Daily Public Journals"

​"Public Buildings in the Park"

 

NYPL local history collections include tens of thousands of historical photographs of streets and buildings—many no longer standing—of New York City, images served through NYPL Digital Collections.

A collage showing a directory entry, a map, and a sepia photograph of ornate buildings.Trow’s New York City Directory, 1920-21;  Plate 6 Atlas of the city of New York, borough of Manhattan. From actual surveys and official plans / by George W. and Walter S. Bromley, 1920; Manhattan: West End Avenue - 76th Street (West), 1925.

Genealogists can use fire insurance maps to identify the homes of their ancestors in photographs. For instance, a researcher wants to know where Benjamin Britt lived in New York City in 1920 and, if possible, what the building looked like. Using a digitized 1920 New York city directory to find an address, 344 West End Avenue, and a fire insurance map to pinpoint not only the location but also the shape and layout of the building, a researcher is able to find a picture of Benjamin Britt’s home from approximately the period he would have lived there.

 

Pretty much any map can be used to locate genealogical data. Some other maps in the NYPL collections that help researchers find records describing familial relations include:

The image is a historical property map indicating a section of Broadway-City Line Property. The map is predominantly yellow and green, representing streets and areas, with detailed lot divisions. Several roads and avenues are marked, including Broadway, Van Cortlandt Avenue, and Terrace. There are numerous small rectangles depicting individual lots, along with larger rectangles and squares denoting buildings or structures. In the central and lower parts of the map, there are extensive rows of small plots, each labeled with lot numbers. Text boxes providing details about property sales and historical prices interrupt the map layout. The map includes a directional compass located on the left side, indicating North. Adjacent to and surrounding the central plot divisions are streets and residential areas, denoted by rectangular and irregular shapes, with spaces indicating various terrains or vacant land.

Map of 197 Lots known as the Broadway City Line Property, Broadway & 262nd St opposite Van Cortlandt Park and running through the boundary line of New York City (NYPL Digital Collections)

FURTHER READING