Attention, Genea-Musings readers: it's Saturday Night! Are you ready for some Genealogy Fun?
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) Find one of your ancestral homes on Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/). Put the street address in the search box and find the home. Select Map and/or Satellite view.
2) Find out if this location is shown in Street View (click on the Push Pin, does it show Street View?). If so, click on Street View and manipulate the image to get a good view of your ancestral home.
3) Show us the pictures!! (I use screen shots, but if you want to edit the image, go ahead!) Put them in a blog post of your own, or put the picture(s) on Facebook. If you can't do images, then tell us about what you've done in a blog post, a comment to this post, or on Facebook.
4) Did you learn anything from this mission about your ancestral home? Is it still there? Has it been improved or modified?
Here's mine:
The last time I checked Google Maps did not have a Street View for my ancestral homes at 2115 30th Street, 2119 30th Street, 22114 Fern Street, 2116 Fern Street and 2130 Fern Street, all in San Diego. I was thrilled to find Street Views now!
1) Here is the Map view of the block bounded by 30th Street to the west, Fern Street to the east, Ivy Street on the north, and Hawthorn Street on the south:
This basic Google Map now shows the approximate land plot size for each lot. The push pin above is on 2130 Fern Street.
2) Here is the Satellite view of the block (with maximum zoom in):
The larger building with the near-white roof is 2115-2119 30th Street; the smaller building with the near-white roof is 2114-2116 Fern Street. There are four buildings just to the north of these two buildings with gray roofs - the two on 30th Street are 2123 and 2127 30th Street. The two on Fern Street are at 2130 Fern Street - the smaller one is a separate garage (which may be a granny flat now?).
3. Here is the Street View of 2115-2119 30th Street. There are two separate residences in this two-story building. The apartment house to the right was built in about 1953.
4) This is the Street View of 2114-2116 Fern Street, the smaller two-story building with the near-white roof:
5) The Street View below is of 2130 Fern Street:
My great-grandparents, Henry Austin and Della (Smith) Carringer, built the residence now at 2115-2119 30th in about 1895, but it was located on the corner of 30th and Hawthorn. In the 1920's it was moved to the middle of the block, and the second story was added on to and made into a separate residence. I lived in 2119 30th Street from 1947 to 1968 with my parents and brothers.
In the 1920's, the Carringers built the second two-story building at 2114-2116 Fern Street. After World War II, my parents lived in both between 1945 and 1947.
My grandparents, Lyle and Emily (Auble) Carringer built the home at 2130 Fern Street in 1920, and lived there until about 1947, when they moved to 2115 30th Street after Lyle's parents died. During World War II<>
I think the thing that I learned from this was the relative size of the lots - the 2115-2119 30th Street lot is larger than the 2114-2116 Fern Street lot. I've always thought that the lots and the buildings were approximately the same size.
