Now you must determine the name of the location at the time of the event in addition to the name of the location today. The reason for this is that records are catalogued and retained in their original jurisdiction.

Use gazetteers of the time period, geographical dictionaries, maps, and books to guide you to the name of the county in which a town might have existed during the years your relatives lived there. Counties were constantly changing in the United States.

You can also use The Handy Book or Ancestry's Redbook. I like to use a genealogy program called AniMAP: U.S. County Boundary Historical Atlas or an Animated Mapping program. It can be found at the www.GRAonline.com web site under "products" and then "CDs". Once you click on the link, click on your back button to return to this lesson.

Try out AniMAP for free at the local Family History Center in Seaside. Serious U.S. researchers should own this program. It saves you countless hours. Maps of the full U.S. are included showing the changes in state, territorial, and county boundaries from the origin of the state to the present time. In addition the mileage between states, a site plotter to accurately locate a town, and other options are available.