Andersons of Colonial N. Carolina

Interest in my Isle of Wight map is heating up and I thought it timely to mention How I Do It…  I use 2 graphics programs (Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop) and, importantly, a deed-mapping program (Metes and Bounds).

The base maps that I use are from Topoquest.com (free).  These maps are high resolution TIFF files and when you put several together you get a HUGE filesize map.  None of this is terribly complex but it is cumbersome to manage.  It is also expensive for the everyday genealogist (the Adobe products are say, $700 on a sale).  For diehards who want to try, there is a free program called GIMP which is an Open System program which does much of what Photoshop does.  The Metes and Bounds program is maybe $30. (I only use it to construct the shape of the “patent” and then copy/paste into Illustrator).

Research: I use the actual patents found at the Library of Virginia website.  I transcribe the metes and bounds and then plot them with the deed-mapping software.

What results is a jig-saw puzzle.  Independent pieces that can’t be rotated and can only be put together with references to adjacent landowners and other clues.

I probably have several hundred hours invested in that map.  The farther East you go the earlier and more “goofy” the patent descriptions get.  This type of project is not for the weak of heart.  The good part is that this methodology makes it at least “feasible” as compared to the old days of actually “drawing” and plotting the data.