Professor Stephen Egbert (University of Kansas) and I (Karen Roekard)
have been working on developing the field of Geospatial Genealogy i.e.
an arena of genealogical research, both micro- and macro-, that
utilizes geographic "place" as the primary defining variable in
researching ancestors. We have recently noticed something related to
Google Earth that was not available just a few months ago and is
so-o-o-o exciting that we could not wait till we finish the article
we are writing to share it.

Most of us have now been exposed to the wonders of Google Earth: its
"eye-in-the-sky" views that let us zoom in on cities, towns, and
natural wonders in exotic places as easily as we can zoom in on our
own homes (and those of our neighbors!). It seems that as part of
their continual upgrading of the level of detail available >from their
air photos and satellite images, they have recently added very, very
detailed satellite images of many towns and villages in eastern

As part of our work, we have been inputting our 19th century cadastral
maps (maps of land ownership) of towns in Galicia into the Geographic
Information System (GIS) format. Now we are finding that we can use
Google Earth as an easy way to overlay our 19th century maps on top of
present-day satellite images, thus being able to identify the current
locations of our ancestors' homes.

This is done by adding a photo of a cadastral map (or any surveyed
map!!) into Google Earth as an "image overlay." You then move and
stretch the map into its correct location using features you can see

on both your map and the satellite image as reference points. These
might be road intersections or large permanent buildings such as
churches.

The best part of overlaying your map is that once you have positioned
it correctly, you can use a slider to make the map appear transparent
or opaque, or anything in between. This lets you see where buildings
and roads have disappeared, where they have been added or changed, and
perhaps most exciting, where they still exist. The image overlay of
your map can be saved to your Google Earth Places and can also be
shared with others. Making image overlays can be easily accomplished
by referring to Google Earth's online help. If you need an additional
reference, we will be putting together a more detailed technical note
that we can email to you.....