couldn't help but notice the county seat of my home county, Nottoway County, is 
omitted. I know it is tiny but still....



----- Original Message ----
From: James W. Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, July 14, 2010 3:21:02 PM
Subject: [VA-HIST] Fwd: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries now available 
online

The long awaited digital version of the Newberry's historical county boundary 
data is finally here...

James


-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     Atlas of Historical County Boundaries now available online
Date:     Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:20:21 -0600
From:     Otterstrom- HistGeog <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:     H-Net Network for Historical Geography <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask]



From: Douglas Knox [[log in to unmask]]
Date sent: 12 Jul 2010

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries now available online

The Newberry Library is pleased to announce the completion and release of its 
Digital Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, a dataset that covers every 
day-to-day change in the size, shape, location, name, organization, and 
attachment of each U.S. county and state from the creation of the first county 
in 1634 through 2000.

Nearly every aspect of American life can be described, analyzed, and illuminated 
through data gathered and organized by county or available in county records, 
and knowing how and when boundaries changed is often the key to finding and 
understanding great quantities of historical data.  For example, a farm may have 
been in one family for many generations, but over the decades changes in county 
lines may have effectively moved that farm from one county to another. When 
looking for old family records, how does the modern genealogist know which 
county seat will hold great-grandmother's marriage certificate? How does an 
attorney know which county seat recorded the deed to great-great-grandfather's 
farm?

In addition, population figures are commonly aggregated at the county level, but 
comparing statistics from one enumeration to the next may not accurately reveal 
actual change. Was a change in the figures from census to census due to 
population movement or to a change in the boundaries of the reporting counties, 
or to a combination of both?

With the Newberry's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, genealogists, 
geographers, historians, political scientists, attorneys, demographers, and many 
more now can find accurate county data that will greatly assist them in their 
research.

The data are organized by state and are available online in four versions:

* Viewable, interactive maps (electronic analogues to printed maps) on which the 
historical lines have been plotted against a background of the modern county 
network

* Downloadable shapefiles for use in geographic information systems (GIS)

* Downloadable KMZ files for use with Google Earth

* Downloadable and printable PDF files (each full-page frame shows a map of a 
different version of each county, with the historical boundaries displayed 
against a background of the modern county network)

Supplementing the polygons and maps for each state are chronologies, commentary 
on historical problems, long and short metadata documents, and a bibliography.

The project began in 1988, with principal funding provided by the National 
Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. Additional support 
came from the Newberry Library, which also served as headquarters, and from 
other foundations and individuals. The Newberry Library is the copyright holder; 
all files of the Digital Atlas of Historical County Boundaries are free for use 
under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Creative Commons License. 
Queries should be addressed to [log in to unmask] The Website for the Atlas is 
publications.newberry.org/ahcbp.


-- James W. Wilson, PhD
Assistant Professor of Geographic Science
Department of Integrated Science and Technology
James Madison University
801 Carrier Dr. MSC 4302
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
540-568-2757 (p)        [log in to unmask]
540-568-8741 (f)        http://www.gs.jmu.edu



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