Maps and pictures are a great way to help visualize what an ancestral residence looked like. It can also be helpful to be aware of the relative distances between towns and cities that were important in your ancestors’ lives–especially if your family lived for generations in a collection of villages.
While maps have a scale to give the perspective of distance, I constantly compare distances between ancestral villages to distances between locations in my own life. While the geography is not the same and the methods of transportation were different, the perspective helps–if only a little.
It also makes the whole area in which they lived seem a little less abstract.
One response
Experience has taught me that the towns in England and Germany are often named with relation to a (slightly) bigger town that they are near. Maps are wonderful. Using google maps and genuine old maps together has shown me where towns really were.