Mappy Monday - Historic Map Works

In honor of National Library Week, ProQuest is offering free access to some of their databases through April 20, 2013. The one of most interest for genealogy research is the Historic Map Works site with images of many old atlases online. Once the free access period ends, these resources will only be available in libraries.

I entered a search for Clinton County, Ohio and found atlases for 1876 and 1903. The snippet pictured to the left shows a section of land in Wayne Township with my 3x great-grandfather Patrick Creedan's land and nearby neighbors, D. Creden and T. Keefe. Timothy Keefe was the executor of Patrick's will and I believe his mother was Johanna Creedon.

Be sure and check out the directory pages for each atlas too. In this case, they were listed as "patrons", so I'm assuming that they had to pay to be included. The directory for Wayne Township had a place of origin for Patrick as County Cork, Ireland. I think this is the only record where I've seen something more specific than Ireland. It also listed his date of settlement in Clinton County as 1849!

I hadn't been able to find Patrick in the 1850 census, but if he settled in Clinton County in 1849, I figured he had to be there. I took a harder look and found this hard to read entry indexed as Patrick Craddin. He was working as a farm laborer and didn't have any family listed with him. The age is off a bit, but this is the best possibility I've found for him in 1850.

I also found atlases for my ancestors in Maryland and Mercer County, Ohio. Thanks to Tammy K. for passing this along to the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland Genealogy group on Facebook. Happy hunting!