Genealogy Maps & Migration

A map of where your ancestors actually were — at the right date — solves more brick walls than any name search. Historical-boundary tools, georeferenced old maps, and route-visualization apps let you trace a family's path. For the underlying GIS tools see Maps & Geo; for finding the European village of origin see Genealogy By Country (Europe); for travel records see Genealogy Immigration & Passenger Records.

Historical-boundary tools (the unsung essential)

• ★ ★ Atlas of Historical County Boundaries — free; Newberry Library project. Animated map of every US county-line change from colonial times to present. Critical because a deed in 1845 "Smith County" may live in 1820 "Brown County" records (before the split). Downloadable shapefiles for QGIS.
  • https://digital.newberry.org/ahcb/
• AniMap — paid Windows; same idea, with animation; long-running.
• Old Maps Online — free aggregator of historical maps from libraries worldwide.
• MapHub historical layer — free; community-shared historical map overlays.

Free historical map archives

• ★ ★ David Rumsey Historical Map Collection — free; ~150,000 high-res historical maps; downloadable; many georeferenced. The world's best free historical-cartography collection.
  • https://www.davidrumsey.com/
• ★ Library of Congress Maps Division — free; US-flavored; Sanborn fire-insurance maps, panoramic city maps.
• ★ National Library of Scotland Maps — free; Scottish + general historical maps; superb scan quality.
• British Library Map Room — free; UK + global historical maps.
• Old Maps Online (free aggregator) — searches across many libraries simultaneously.
• USGS Historical Topo Maps — free; US topographic maps from 1880s onward.
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps — free at LOC for many cities (out of copyright); paid at ProQuest for newer.
• Gallica Cartes — free; French national library map collection.

Tools to map family migrations

• ★ Google My Maps — free; the easiest "drop pins for each ancestor's birth/marriage/death and draw the migration line." Shareable, embeddable.
• MapAList — free; CSV-to-map; bulk-plot a list of addresses.
• Family Tree Maker maps — included with FTM; auto-plots from your tree's place data.
• TreeView mapping — paid Windows; visualization of migrations from a GEDCOM.
• Gramps GeoView / Place Hierarchy — free; built into Gramps; plots events on OpenStreetMap.
• webtrees Places module — free; map of all events in your tree.
• MyHeritage Tree Map — paid; auto-plots tree events.
• Ancestry "Where did they live" view — paid; integrated.

Georeferencing your own historical maps (advanced)

• MapWarper — free; web tool to georeference scanned old maps onto modern coordinates. Great for plotting an ancestor's farm on a 1875 county atlas.
• QGIS Georeferencer — see Maps & Geo. FOSS GIS; rectifies historical maps for overlay analysis.
• Allmaps — free; modern georeferencing tool; IIIF-compatible.

Place-name research

• GNIS (Geographic Names Information System) — free; US place names + variants; finds historical names that no longer exist.
• GeoNames — free; global gazetteer.
• JewishGen Communities Database — free; central / eastern European shtetls + town variants (Yiddish / Polish / German names for the same place).
• Meyers Gazetteer — free; German-empire-era gazetteer; essential for German research (towns existed in different administrative units pre-WWI).
• Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego — free; 1880s Polish/Russian/Galician gazetteer (in Polish).
• GENUKI gazetteers — free; UK & Ireland.

Visualizing family migration timelines

• Tableau Public — free tier; build interactive migration story dashboards.
• Datawrapper — free for non-commercial; quick map embeds.
• TimeMapper / Timeline.js — free; combine timelines + maps.
• Mapbox GL JS / MapLibre GL — for custom storytelling apps; see Maps & Geo.
• deck.gl — see Maps & Geo; WebGL geospatial vis for "millions of points" research.

Specific-research-question maps

• Slave Voyages Database — free; Atlantic + Intra-American slave-trade voyages; essential for African-American research.
• Native American Tribes Map (Native Land Digital) — free; pre-contact territories.
• Historical National Forest / Public Land maps — BLM & USFS.
• Migration Trail maps (Oregon, Mormon, Santa Fe) — free, multiple aggregators.
• Plat maps — county GIS portals; many free.
• Sanborn fire-insurance maps — free at LOC; show building footprints + occupancy block-by-block in cities, sometimes naming the family business.

What's changing in 2024–2026

• More free national-library georeferencing — IIIF-based georeferencing using Allmaps spreading.
• AI place-name normalization — community workflows pipe a tree's place strings through LLMs to identify standard GeoNames matches.
• MyHeritage / Ancestry map views improving with better date-aware boundaries (still imperfect).
• JewishGen Communities Database continued expansion; additional Polish / Lithuanian / Belarusian towns.

Pick this if…

• Solving "what county was this in?" (US): Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.
• Default free map for a tree migration: Google My Maps.
• Beautiful historical maps for a published family history: David Rumsey + LOC.
• Plotting events on a map automatically from your tree: Gramps GeoView, webtrees Places, or paid FTM/MyHeritage views.
• Georeferencing an old county atlas: MapWarper or QGIS Georeferencer.
• German village research: Meyers Gazetteer.
• Eastern European / Jewish village research: JewishGen Communities Database.
• Custom interactive migration story for a family blog: Datawrapper or MapLibre GL.