Projectkin Live: 7 Ranges GIS Event Preview with Crystal Lorimor and Anthony Atkins

Thank you,

Bill Moore

,

Dr. Mary M. Marshall

,

Emily Graves

,

Dr. Koral LaVorgna

Rick Mutton

,

Bonnie Larson

,

Diane Wahn Shotton

, and many others for tuning into today’s preview with

Crystal Lorimor

and

Anthony Atkins

. It was so good of you to join us.

If you enjoyed this recording, you’d be doing us a favor by leaving us a little love 🫶 and adding your thoughts in the comments below. If you think it’ll be valuable to others, share it individually or in group pages.

When

Jennifer Jones

tipped me off to what Crystal was working on, I got excited. Even a few data points can be interesting, but when structured data is combined with some of the basic genealogical facts we work with in family history, like people, places, and dates — it can be mind-blowing.

Many of you know community member Crystal Lorimor, for her writing about Creighton Cabin. You may not realize that she is also the community development director for Belmont County, Ohio. In that capacity, she and two colleagues, Belmont County GIS Director Anthony Atkins and Recorder Jason Garczyk, have come up with an extraordinary resource for family historians and genealogists that uses GIS tools to connect historical Land Patent maps in the Seven Ranges section of eastern Ohio to modern genealogical data.

Connecting patent records to GIS coordinates in the Seven Ranges section was just the start. To make it even more interesting, Anthony added FamilySearch data to boot!

After a few conversations, I had the opportunity to explore what they’ve created. I was thrilled. Anthony has built on the design to create a tool we can play with now:

• gis.belcogis.com/Northwest_Territory

See if you can’t play around with it a bit as I did. My first stop was with “Ross, James” as Anthony suggested. This takes us to the history of US Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania and his speculations in the Northwest Territory.

Screenshot from an exploration of the BelcoGIS tool for the Seven Ranges Section in the Northwest Territory.

To my delight, Crystal, Anthony, and Jason agreed to join me in a special program on October 30th, you won’t want to miss.

This program will be held over Zoom. You’ll find the link to register on our Event Page, Storytelling, County GIS Maps & Land Patents: The 7 Ranges & Belmont Co., OH. The program will be recorded.

Today’s program gives you a preview of what’s ahead, though you’re more than welcome to explore the link and come to the session on the 30th with questions for discussion.

Crystal has also agreed to join me on Sunday, November 2nd, for a follow-up conversation over Substack Live. I hope you can join us then, too.

Projectkin is a free publication supported by the generous contributions of our Patrons. You’re welcome to share these posts and invite friends to join us at upcoming events.