Maps, Genealogy & Directionally Challenged Me

I am a directionally challenged person (my family gets a kick out of me getting lost leaving my hotel room) so I have generally avoided maps in my research. I may look things up quickly (thank goodness for google maps!) but I haven’t gone deeper.

Well, that is changing. With some wonderful advice from a knowledgeable researcher/author who has taken me under her wing, (Sharon you are my hero) I am getting better.

Today I wanted to find out more about the locations where my family was living in Quebec City in 1900. As per the wonderful instructions I was given I clicked over to the Quebec Archives website  Digital Maps and Plans Collection and I was determined to figure this out! (plus no one was watching to laugh at my missteps).

I am going to walk you through what I did with some screenshots for easier explanation. I started at the home page and under ‘Choose a Collection’ I selected ‘Plans de villes et villages du Quebec’.

I then chose the letter “Q” from the ‘Tous’ title and received three choices: ‘Region’, ‘Quebec, Quebec’ or ‘Quyon’. I chose number 2 which brought me to this page.This brought up quite a few choices but I was looking for a map close to the 1900 date so I went with the Insurance plan of the City of Quebec 1898.

This opened up a series of thumbnails, I did notice the first thumbnail was an index and where I wanted to start.  Knowing that the family I was looking for was living on Conroy street I selected the Full-Screen option for easier reading. Once the fullscreen was open it was a matter of finding Conroy in the alphabetic list. Reading across from Conroy it indicated I needed Map 29.

And wouldn’t you know it… here is the street that my great grandfather Peter Jordan was living on in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Not only that, but his father was living around the corner on St. Amable.

I am not done, my wonder-guide Sharon tells me that although I know where they lived in order to locate land records I will need to know what the Lot & Block number is. One thing always leads to another in genealogy.

At this point, I am surprised that my directionally challenged self made it this far!