The 1st installment
The history of NY’s land exclusive NYC can be found in tracing and exploring the land.
Two very accurate and very useful maps are the 1829 Burr atlas of the state of NY and the 1895 Joseph Bien map of the state of NY.
The Burr Atlas has a collection of county maps based on those that had been erected by that date. While no names of any direct genealogical nature it does have lot numbers which delineated and showed those parcels that were surveyed for land development.
The Bein map, done in 1895 is the state as it was laid out at the time, with the added feature of laying out the grants, patents and the large tracts of land as they were created and sold. The location of each can help to find places where people settled as the land was populated.
There are other types of maps that can help to expand the research done using the two types mentioned above
These will be in the next post