User:Carlyannbagley/sandbox1

Introduction
Maps are an important source to locate the places where your ancestors lived. They help you see the neighboring towns and geographic features of the area from which your ancestor came.

Maps are also helpful in locating places, parishes, geographical features, transportation routes, and proximities to other towns. Historical maps are especially useful for understanding boundary changes.

Maps are published either individually or as an atlas. An atlas is a bound collection of maps. Maps may also be included in gazetteers, guidebooks, local histories, historical geographies, encyclopedias, and history texts.

Using Maps
Maps must be used carefully for several reasons:


 * There are often several places with the same name. For example, there are over 50 towns throughout the various states of Mexico that begin with the name Dolores.
 * The spelling and even names of some towns may have changed since your ancestor lived there. For example, the town presently known as Arroyo Seco was formerly named El Rincón, in the state of Sonora.
 * Place-names are often misspelled in English sources. Difficult names may have been shortened and important diacritic marks omitted.
 * Political boundaries are not clearly indicated on all maps.

Finding the Specific Town on the Map
To successfully research maps from Mexico, you must identify the town where your ancestor lived. Because there are several towns that have the same name, you may need some additional information before you can locate the correct town on a map. You will be more successful in identifying the town on a map if you have some information about the town. Using gazetteers and other such sources to identify the municipio and district your ancestor’s town was in will distinguish it from other towns of the same name and help you locate it on a map. See the Mexico Gazetteers article for more information.

Mexico through the Centuries

 * Mexico in 2013
 * Mexico in 1924
 * Mexico in 1886
 * Mexico in 1840
 * Mexico in 1824
 * Mexico in 1771
 * Mexico in 1747
 * Mexico in 1719
 * Mexico in 1656

Historical Maps Collections
One of the pages on the Internet of greatest relevance is hosted by, “The University of Texas at Austin” and is called, Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection. This collection has a specific section for Mexico. It also counts with maps of North America that are relevant because of the areas which belonged to Mexico and Spain. Although those files are of extreme importance, one of greater, is the one pertaining to links to other pages on the Internet. It is important for the large amount of the sources that one finds there.

Another extremely good web page is that of the David Rumsey collection. Similar to the aforementioned collection, it also has an ample selection of Mexico maps. The maps include a date range that extends from the present to antiquity and it also boasts of maps pertaining to areas that once belonged to Mexico and/or Spain.

There are also historical maps of Mexico available on the Nuestros Ranchos site.

To access the maps on these sites you might need to disable your computer's pop-up blocker.

Modern Maps

 * Mexico Secretariat of Communications and Transportation Digital Atlas
 * http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/
 * http://www.mapquest.com/

Often one forgets the more recent maps. Google's map site is one of the best for quickly determining, not only the place of interest, but also the towns, cities, topography, etc. that are found in the environs. Many times one only knows the name of the town and not necessarily the state. Entering the name of the town in Google maps search area helps in finding the state. If one searches for the city and country on the Google home page information can be found on the municipality and state. This information is important when one is trying to determine jurisdictions amongst other things.

Types of Maps
Different types of maps help you in different ways, for example:


 * Historical atlases describe the growth and development of countries, showing boundaries, migration routes, settlement patterns, military campaigns, and other historical information.
 * Road atlases are useful because of the detail they provide.
 * Other types of maps include: parish maps, state maps, tourist maps, topographical maps, and air navigation maps. City maps are extremely helpful when researching in large cities such as Mexico City.

Why Use Gazetteers
A gazetteer is a dictionary of place-names. Gazetteers list or describe towns and villages, parishes and municipios, states, populations, rivers and mountains, and other geographical features. They usually include only the names of places that existed at the time the gazetteer was published. Within a specific geographical area, the place-names are listed in alphabetical order, similar to a dictionary.

You can use a gazetteer to locate the places where your family lived and to determine the civil and church jurisdictions over those places. For example, if you were to look for Villa de Seris, the gazetteer would mention that it is a community in the municipio of Hermosillo, found in the state of Sonora. Since Villa de Seris is part of the municipio of Hermosillo civil registration records for Villa de Seris would be found in the records of Hermosillo.

There are many places in Mexico with similar or identical place-names. You will need to use a gazetteer to identify the specific town where your ancestor lived, the state the town was or is in, and the jurisdictions where records about the person was kept.

Gazetteer Contents
Gazetteers may also provide additional information about towns, such as:


 * The different religious denominations.
 * The schools, colleges, and universities.
 * Major manufacturers, canals, docks, and railroad stations.
 * Some gazetteers contain historical information and biographical information on some individuals (usually high ranking individuals)

Online Gazetteers
Antonio García-Cubas's Diccionario Geográfico, Histórico y Biográfico de los Estados Unidos Mexicano is one of the best gazetteers for Mexico. The gazetteer provides civil jurisdictions for the entire country of Mexico. The gazetteer can be found online at the following websites:
 * Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. This website has the entire gazetteer in color scans in PDF format.
 * Tomo 1 contains A - B
 * Tomo 2 contains C- Ch
 * Tomo 3 contains D - Ll
 * Tomo 4 contains M - R
 * Tomo 5 contains S - Z
 * Biblioteca Digital Daniel Cosío Villegas. This website has every place name indexed, so it's the best way to quickly and easily find the locality you're looking for provided you can spell the name of the locality correctly or at the very least know the first few letters of the name.

Other Resources
There are many other gazetteers besides Antonio Garcia Cubas' but none of them is online. You can find them by using online catalogs such as the FamilySearch Catalog or Worldcat.

To find additional gazetteers for Mexico in the FamilySearch Catalog follow these steps:


 * 1) Go to the FamilySearch Catalog
 * 2) Click on: Place Search
 * 3) Enter: Mexico in the first box, and leave the second box empty.
 * 4) Click on: Mexico
 * 5) Click on: Mexico-Gazetteers

Note: The entries that have been microfilmed can be ordered to your local family history center. To learn more about finding your local family history centerclick here...