Lloyds on the Map

 This week's #52ancestors family history writing prompt is "Maps".  After photos, maps are some of my favorite things to add to my families' stories.  I especially enjoy finding maps from the time period that are often colorful and full of interesting details.  I have found stabile cadaster maps of my family's villages in what was then Bohemia (see my Holy Family blog for that story).  

My cousin and I have been on a research journey with our Lloyd ancestors over the past several months. One of our like minded discussions one day was about taking a map and putting pins in to show where our ancestors lived.  It's scary how similarly we think :)   I actually had started plotting out locations for two other families I am researching a few years ago.  I found a N.G. quality map of the USA and had it mounted on a large piece of foam core.  I found some small pins that came in different colored heads to use that are perfect.  

The hard part to maps is that over time, places change, towns are no longer there.  Trying to find the exact location of Calms Neck, Virginia on my map was not easy, for example.  It was, and I think still is, a small town or village and finding where the pin should be placed was difficult.  I needed my phone camera on zoom to really get fairly accurate placement.  I think Baltimore is still in the same spot (ha ha). 

Baltimore was the point of entry for John Lloyd (Esq) as far as I know.  I am glad to have a starting point that was a major location that is easily identifiable and can locate on the map.  As you can see here, this area is close to so many important locations in American history. 

I have plotted the first known locations of John Lloyd and his family. 1. Baltimore, point of entry; 2. Talbot, MD where John Lloyd was documented to have lived; 3. Orange, VA (I am unsure if this is supposed to be Orange, VA or Orange County, VA?), where John married Prudence Emery; 4. Calms Neck, VA, where John and Prudence seemed to have settled down and remained.  I had a jar of crafty tags that I am thinking of using. Excuse my handwritten notes on this tag. I decided half way through that this will need to be typed up to look nice and just basically scribbled down the information I located so far. 

My plan is to have the pins connected with a string.  The string on this map is hard to see. I think I will use some thicker crafty thread that is white with a colorful thread twisted in it. They make a variety of colors and it will be fun to coordinate the colored pins with the colored thread.  This is an example of the thread I am thinking of:

I think that this work will make comparing locations of all my families easier to observe. I don't know how many times I have been knee deep in records and find a location for one family that sounds familiar for another of my families. This way, will also help me research the location for information as well as movement patterns of families. I have noticed some movement patterns in a few families associated with the Lloyds. These families moved from one location to one or more other locations, and eventually a marriage between the families would occur.  I also like researching the history of different places and understanding what happened there over time, and during the time my ancestors lived there.  

Calms Neck, Virginia

This is how magnified I had to get to find the best spot to pin this location.