How to Find Your Ancestors House

First Post in a series.

I always like to add a photo of the place an ancestor lived to the family tree.  But sometimes you need to do some detective work to find it.

Jacob Dennis House, Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, New Jersey

That’s what this post is all about,  how to figure out which house your family lived in.  The first place to look is the census.

Depending on the census year, it may be as simple as looking up the census page and reading the street and house number.  But what if the census does not show the house number?

1887 Map for Dover New Jersey

My next place to look  is the land ownership map for the county the subject lived in.  You can find these maps on Ancestry.com,  or the local library. They were produced generally between 1860 and 1910.  This particular map shows the Munson home on South Morris Street in Dover New Jersey.  You can see the black square showing the house location,  and the  name of the owner.

Sometimes you can even find an image of the home as it looks today at Google maps.  Enter the address in Google Maps, this will bring up a map of the address.

Little Yellow Man Icon

What you want is the street view, which you get by dragging the “little yellow man” icon to the location you want to see and dropping him.  Keep in mind that this is not available for all locations, usually just main roads.

Munson House, Dover NJ, as it looks today.

What if your ancestor did not live there at the time the ownership map  was printed? Can you still use the map to find the house? Yes!

That will be the topic of my next post.