Researching sites... a little help?

[wbrian]

Hi All,
I still fairly new at this, and enjoying the heck out of it. My biggest difficulty with the hobby, though is finding good hunting grounds. I'm not sure where to go to try and find the old stuff, you know? I'm not looking for anyone to tell me what field to go to, or what tree to look under, but I could use some help trying to figure out possbile locations for myself. What kind of research do you do? Use the library for research? If you know of a property, is there some online database where you can look up any historical significance? Case in point, I'm in Virginia Beach, VA. A friend of mine has some farm property in the Blackwater area. It's about 13 acres in total. How can I research her property?

Thanks for any tips you can pass along! I'm dying to thrill others with the type of finds I see here posted by many of you (that thrill me!).

Thanks!
Brian

 

[Richard-N-FL]

Brian,

Try and find a website that has old maps of the area. you can even put in the exact area in your search engine and see what comes up. Lastly just drive around and gather visual evidence like older homes, stores or other structures that can help you date the area. And of course your library might have some info, and the court house will have records about the property.

Hope this helps.

 

[Hape]

Sometimes it is worth to get a look from above on the area you like to search on. Use for example google earth. You may see some old structure marks in the ground you normally cant see. If you have on old map you can use google earth too to copy it as a second layer on top of the google earth view. That way you can locate buildings etc. that are gone since a long time. Peter

 

[tabdog]

n/t

 

[Uncle Willy]

You can go to the Library of Congress website ( look it up on Google ) and they have a wealth of info on everything everywhere going back before the Civil War. Locally you can go to theOffice of the County Registrar and get info on any piece of property back to its first original owner.

Bill

 

[digginhistory]

research old maps in your area and try to pinpoint housesites or skirmich areas good luck let me know how it goes

 

[MenotomyMaps]

I'm scanning my old map collection and putting it on-line.
I've added a lot of maps since I last posted here.
There are mining district maps, gold claims maps, maps showing the locations of parks, railroad stations, schools, etc.

Vin - Menotomy Maps
http://menotomymaps.com