This came to me via H-New Jersey, but I think it will be extremely useful
for the study of Virginia history.
Here's the link to Virginia county maps:
Here's the link to the Virginia county maps:
http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/statepages/Virginia.html
Martha Katz-Hyman
>Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:20:21 -0600
>From: Otterstrom- HistGeog <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries now available online
>
>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.
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