Find a genealogical gold mine in Google Maps

Once or twice a month I teach a class on Google for Genealogy. At the
beginning of each section, I always ask the class members about their
previous experience with various Google features including Google Maps,
Google Books, Google News, Blogs and many other apps and features. In
many cases, my questions draw a complete blank. No one in the class has
ever tried or even knew about the feature or function. This is
interesting because almost every person in every class uses Google's search
function. Google is the modern Swiss Army Knife of the online world. If
some of the features aren't pointed out to you, you simply use the most
popular ones and ignore the rest.

Google Maps is goldmine for genealogists. It is a given fact that almost all genealogical research
is tied to geographic locations. For the most part, records were and are
kept in the geographic area where the events occurred. During my recent
attempts to find the name my great-grandfather carved into a rock in
northern Arizona, I searched Google Maps, Google Earth and lot of other
maps to find the location. Yesterday, I was working with a patron at the
Mesa Regional Family History Center and her mother's family came from
Little Falls, Morrison County, Minnesota. In looking on Google, I find
that there is a Wikipedia
article on Little Falls and that the population was 7,719 in the 2000
U.S. Census. It was the boyhood home of Charles Lindbergh, the aviator.
Since our meeting yesterday was quite short and she is just starting her
genealogical research, I am pretty sure she doesn't yet know all of
these facts.
Read more...