Reconstructing a 19th-Century Riverside Community with Historical GIS (emf2026)

I am a genealogist who uses maps and technology to explore how people lived. Historical GIS (HGIS) applies GIS tools to historical sources to understand how places and communities changed over time. In this presentation, I will show how I used HGIS to aid genealogical research by integrating QGIS with 1840 tithe maps, OS maps, OpenStreetMap data, and census records to trace households and buildings along a Hampshire riverside street from 1840 to 1921. The aim is to provide an overview of HGIS in genealogy, including aligning historical maps with modern coordinates, linking people to properties, and answering questions through a single spatial view.

After creating the core map, I focused on linking people to specific properties over time. I imported a colour map scan into QGIS, traced buildings, and connected them to census records and parish registers. This involved addressing challenges such as name variants, multi-household properties, and short-term moves within the same area. I also encountered surprises and limitations, including the feasibility of reconstructing a census enumerator’s route in a close-knit community.

Once mapped and interconnected, patterns emerged that are not immediately obvious from the documents alone. Properties such as inns and boatyards showed long-standing kinship ties among households, with related families moving between nearby buildings and maintaining connections over decades. I will share how integrating maps with records clarified who lived where, highlighted clusters of work and occupation, and gave a detailed view of how this riverside community evolved over time.

Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/87-reconstructing-a-19th-century-riverside-community