Saturday, April 3, 2021

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Google Maps of Ancestral Homes

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  
Identify an ancestral home address ( preferably one with a street address...) for one of your ancestral families (You do know where they lived, don't you?  If not, consult the 1900 to 1940 US Census records, or City Directories).

2)  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) and enter the street address (and city/town if necessary - usually you can pick from a list) for your selected ancestral home.

3)  Look at the street map, the satellite map, and the street view.  Zoom in or out, or manipulate the image as you wish.

4)  Tell us or show us your map images in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  
Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

5)  Do you have maps and street view pictures for all of your known ancestral homes?

Here's mine:

1)  I picked my wife's mother's home at 46 Rivoli Street in San Francisco.  Edna May Schaffner was born there in 1913, daughter of Paul and Edna (McKnew) Schaffner, and lived there until she married Leo Leland in 1937.

2)  I did this (there were five entries on the dropdown menu for "46 Rivoli").

3)  and 4) The street Map view is:


This address is in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, just northeast of Mount Sutro.

The Satellite view shows the surrounding area with vegetation, and you can get some idea of the terrain:


A zoomed in view of the house on the Satellite view shows that this house is on a street going uphill from left to right:


The Street View picture shows the front of the house:


Of course, the Street view is canted to the right because the Google vehicle was going uphill when it took the picture!  One interesting note - they blurred out the license plate on the car in the driveway!

5)  I have Google Map images for many of my ancestral homes (at least for those after 1900 where I know the street address), but not for all of my homes, and certainly not for all of my wife's ancestral homes.  Another project!

That was fun!

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The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2021/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-google.html

Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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7 comments:

Linda Stufflebean said...

Hi Randy, This was a fun topic. Here's my link: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2021/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-136/
Have a happy Easter and hope you get to visit with family.

Liz said...

Randy, this was a great project/idea!

Here's mine:

https://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2021/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-google.html

ByAPearl said...

Here is my post. Happy Easter!

https://geneajournalsbyapearl.wordpress.com/2021/04/03/google-maps-of-an-ancestral-home/

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

It took me a long time to figure out how to get the map to not show shops and restaurants -- just set it give directions, then turn directions off. Here is my story:

https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2021/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-google.html

Janice M. Sellers said...

It took me a while to do this one, but it was interesting!

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2021/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-google.html

Teresa said...

Here's mine - I posted last night, but went to bed right afterwards. Great challenge :)

https://writingmypast.wordpress.com/2021/04/04/03-apr-2021-saturday-night-genealogy-fun-google-maps-of-ancestral-homes/

Lacie Madison said...

It did take me a long time to do this too, but it was fun. Here is mine--> My post.