Article: Using the Townland MapsBy Sherry IrvineUsing Ancestral Atlas helps me think outside the box, or should I say outside the pedigree chart. I like maps and the new historical townland maps have given me ideas about blending information and planning next steps. Let me explain. The Parish and Family Not long before Ancestral Atlas was launched a new website for Griffith's Valuation (GV) became available. Each entry includes the data and the valuation map indicating the parcel of land described. I decided to collect all entries for Boddy in Mohill parish, check the GV maps for the entries and then enter events (one option is "lived here") at Ancestral Atlas. The GV and Ancestral Atlas historical maps are from approximately the same time period but the GV maps show strictly limited areas for single events. It is impossible to view several events spread over several townlands. The GV search turned up 19 entries for this surname shared among four first names, James, John, Michael and William. This could be four or more individuals. The year of the valuation was 1857. The entries appear in 5 parts of Mohill civil parish: the town of Mohill, and the townlands of Shannagh, Springfield, Tamlaght More, and Treanmore. I could see from the Ancestral Atlas maps that these areas are close together. Springfield is to the east of the town. The other three townlands are to the west and southwest. Tamlaght More is the farthest away and also the largest. By a rough estimate based on the map scale, no part of any of the townlands appears to be more than 2 miles from Mohill town. Getting my bearings was the easy part. Next, I had to decide how to plot the 19 entries associated with only four first names. Future research, I hope, will confirm where each individual resided and how many individuals were involved. James and Michael are occupiers of houses in the town and have no other entries. Therefore, their names are plotted in the town. For the name William there is one occupier entry with a house in Tamlaght More, where he is now plotted. The lessor entries make no mention of houses and are ignored for now, which leaves John off the map. Moving William I found his entry in my list of events, clicked on the green arrow and looked at the details. It is possible to clear the location facts. I did that and closed the entry. I used the Place tab to take advantage of the Ancestral Atlas search feature. This found the correct townland pin, Tamlaght More, and shifted the map. I reopened the William event and clicked on the townland pin. All the location data immediately filled the boxes. William is in his proper place. Help for Research Knowledge of local features, including terrain, buildings and roads helps research. For this problem there will have to be many more events entered at Ancestral Atlas but that will come. I will add first the readily accessible data from online records, beginning with anyone named Boddy who was alive in the 1840s, a little before the GV year of 1857. Next I will turn to resources that can be accessed on microfilm through the local LDS Family History Centre. The list of sources looks like this:
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