Geography

One of the reasons I love genealogy is geography.  Maps.  I love maps.  I have hundreds of them, mostly rolled up but every once in a while I unroll the bundle just to marvel at the work of thousands of cartographers.  I used to subscribe to National Geographic and I have every insert map they printed over a period of many years. NatGeo probably has the best map makers in the world.


Back in April I did additional work on a list of places with the name Sears in them.  You can make your own maps with map pins in google and so I saved those places 

here.  https://tinyurl.com/y82dynl3


 I am sure there are more.  Those were just some I discovered at the geographical map server online and other Sears places i have come across in history.  I would like to augment that list of Sears cemeteries, villages, geological places with Sears in the name to include historic landmarks and houses that were owned by Searses.


I have a good list of "Sears" houses on Quivet Neck, East Dennis, Cape Cod from Mary Kuhrtz and I think I will mark those on the map next.  Just knowing which  houses your ancestors lived in adds so much to a genealogy work.  I know the house where my  grandfather was born.  I know the house that my Dad built in East Dennis with Johnny Burt.  I know of an ancient Benjamin Sears house in Brewster, NY, with friendly ghosts.  The Community of the Holy Spirit invited me to stay there when I was passing through  and gave me a wealth of genealogical information about  Benjamin (1703-1796) (you can read more at http://searsr.com/member/news13.pdf). 


In my FamilyTreeMaker database I have over 12,000 geographical locations.  As part of genealogy do-over it would have been nice if every location was formatted properly, e.g.  Benjamin Sears House, Southeast, Putnam, New York, USA   or Ancient Sears Cemetery, West Brewster, Barnstable, Massachusetts, USA  but that  is one of my ongoing projects since there are probably a hundred ways to format and store those locations - adding the word county after Putnam or Barnstable, abbreviating NY, spelling out USA, leaving the county out altogether- spelling South East incorrectly - (there is also a Northeast, Dutchess, New York, USA) and of course the county boundaries changed over time.


One of the dilemmas I am trying to address is the changing political  affiliations over time- for example Dennis, Massachusetts didn't exist until 1793 so you cannot be born in Dennis before that- you were born in the East Precinct of Yarmouth before 1793.  Barnstable county didn't exist until 2 June 1685 when Plymouth Colony was divided into three counties to make governmental administration easier.  So you can't be born in Barnstable county before 1685.   USA didn't exist until 1776 so before that you were born in Plymouth Colony, England or Massachusetts Bay Colony, England.  And Plymouth Colony was absorbed with the Bay Colony in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  So from 1691 to 1776 you were born in that Province?


Do you make these political distinctions in your genealogy geographical place names?  I think it helps when we are dealing  with colonial history to remember that our Cape Cod ancestors were English subjects from 1621-1776 -  155 years.  They used the English pound, they had an English governor.


Well maybe you have a glimpse of my fascination with geography.  Going back to school  today I might even major in geography? There is a nifty application called Map My Family Tree. I used this program to "map" the locations of Sears folks through time.  You can check some maps out at http://www.Searsr.com/mmft.  Sometimes it helps to see the concentrations of family by county.  Enjoy!  and Happy New Year.