Genealogy Friday: Mapping Your Ancestors

Map where your ancestor lived
Map where your ancestor lived

I discussed creating a timeline for your ancestors.  Another way to keep track is to map them.  This is especially true for our ancestors that were explorers and lived in different areas.

Mark on a map the various places your ancestor used—you can even write the years they lived there

Use a map to mark where various members of a family lived.  For instance if I were to map the McKee family James McKee in Wigtown, Scotland; his son and grandson, Thomas & Archibald McKee would be in Killyleigh, Ireland; his son Archibald in Williamsburg, SC; his son, Adam in Abbeville, SC; his son Michael in Jefferson County, MO.  You could then decide whether to trace Michael’s children that stayed in SC or migrated with him to MO.

While I’ve concentrated on using them with our ancestors, they can also be used with descendants.  For instance Andrew Logan McKee had 10 children, 53 grandchildren and there are currently over 500 descendants living.  We could take and map where each descendant is currently living.   Of course some areas are more heavily populated with family members than other areas.

I like to use plat maps for this information.  However, you may be able to use Genelines or other software for mapping your ancestors.

How do you map your ancestors?

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