From an article by Carol DiPirro-Stipkovits:

I have loved maps since grade school, and I’m still fascinated by them. I’ve been gifted several over the years and my home now has a dedicated wall to hold the collection of both those and estate sale finds, which includes a large pull-down from a local elementary classroom dated 1964. Am I aging myself? Do these still exist? 

Understandably, when I discovered the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, I was thrilled. David Rumsey is President of Cartography Associates, a digital publishing company based in San Francisco. In 1980, after a successful career in real estate, Rumsey, who is clearly even more fascinated with maps than I am, began to collect eighteenth and nineteenth century maps of North and South America, the era during which modern cartography began. Eventually, he expanded his collection to rare sixteenth through twenty-first century maps of America, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific, Arctic, Antarctic, and the world. The collection now contains over 150,000 maps and other cartographic items and is one of the largest private map collections in the world. In 1995, Rumsey made his collection available to the public by building the online David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. There are now over 130,000 items online with new additions being added regularly. The collection is available on his website davidrumsey.comfor free viewing.

How can these maps help genealogists? Old maps bring your ancestors’ hometowns to life. They give you a glimpse at what the world looked like when your ancestors lived there and what was happening at that time. You can also see borders change over the years. 

To search this collection, find as much information about your ancestor’s hometown as possible—country, state, ancestral town name, other geographical details such as nearby villages, rivers, railways, etc. These are all clues to find the right place on a map. I pay attention to railways as I have ancestors who were employed as trainmen so likely lived close by. Use the search box at the top right of the site. If you can’t locate your ancestral town, try searching nearby village names. 

If your ancestor lived in an area that was involved in a disaster, say the Chicago Fire or San Francisco earthquake, using these as search terms may show reconstruction plans or detailed drawings of buildings that were damaged or destroyed. 

The newest feature is “search by text on maps,” which can be accessed next to the search box. A quick search of “Tonawanda” came back with 694 results. The maps can be viewed by hovering your cursor over each result. When you find a map you’re interested in, choose ‘Open in Georeferencer’ and use one of my favorite tools on this site: map overlays. There’s so much you can do with this feature including overlaying it with a modern map to find lost street names.  You’ll want to play with opacity until its easily readable. Clicking Compare in the bottom right will give you additional maps of the same area.