Rutherford County Gis Map – This article describes how GIS students helped one of the authors with a genealogy project that traced the movements of ancestors in the 19th century. Genealogists like to trace their movements through ancestral lands. By finding out when these people lived in a certain place, we can tell a lot about their daily lives. GIS technology can provide powerful tools for locating these locations in space and time.

After retiring from teaching physics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Glenn Julian (one of the authors) turned to his father’s hobby of researching family history. Julian spent nearly a decade researching family records, history, land records at the county library, and deeds recorded in county courts. Around 1816, he learned that his great-grandfather Isom Julian (1795-1885) and great-grandfather George Julian (1812-1906) had moved from Rutherford County, North Carolina to Blunt County, Tennessee.

Rutherford County Gis Map

Tennessee was created from western North Carolina in 1796. Blount County was surveyed using boundaries beginning in 1806. Julian learns that Isom and George continue to move south as McMinn, Hamilton and Bradley counties are formed.

Data & Maps

Julian thought he more or less knew where his ancestor’s farm was (but that wasn’t always the case). He was intrigued by the idea of ​​actually standing on land. The land hadn’t changed much in those two centuries, so he wanted to see the sight his great-grandmother saw when she walked out the door of the cabin in the morning to feed the chickens.

On the recommendation of an undergraduate colleague, Julian contacted Robin J.F. Ebitu for help in locating his ancestral farmland. Ebitt advises the University of Miami’s GISci certification program and teaches introductory and advanced GIS courses with a focus on real-world applications. In these courses, students will use the latest version of ArcGIS for Desktop software (Advanced license level). For advanced students, she guides and advises students on two types of assignments. A semester GIS project is carried out by a single student or a team of 3 or 4 students advising on a client’s main GIS project. Over the course of three semesters, individuals and teams helped trace Julian’s ancestors in three Tennessee counties.

Julian, Smith and Bond claims in McMinn County (about 1840). A mesh grid was created to recreate the Hiwassee area and overlaid on a World Imagery base map to locate it.

A series of treaties with the Cherokee opened up land in eastern Tennessee for people of European descent to legally settle. Settlers were allowed to enter land claims. After paying the entry fee and occupying the land, it was granted rights by the state.

County Gis Data: Gis: Ncsu Libraries

With the signing of the Calhoun Treaty in 1819, the United States federal government purchased a large tract of land known as the Hiwassee Purchase. Hiwassee County’s boundaries included the Hiwassee River, the Great Tennessee River, and the Little Tennessee River, which surrounded McMinn County and other counties.

After the Treaty of New Hotch in 1836, the Cherokee were driven from the last large lands in Tennessee. The area known as Ocoee County extended to the Georgia border and included Hamilton, Bradley and other counties.

Both areas were surveyed in a public domain grid consisting of 6-mile-by-mile townships divided into 36-mile-by-mile areas of 640 acres. The section was further divided into tracts. A quarter lot consisted of 160 acres.

The grid lines in Hiwassee County were parallel to the lines of latitude and longitude. However, apparently to match the Tennessee River somewhat, Ocoee County was surveyed on a grid that was 20 degrees off the latitude and longitude lines.

Tn City & County Sites

A team of three GIS students worked with Julian to locate his ancestral claim in McMinn County, in the southeast corner of Tennessee.

Julian’s great-great-grandfather, Isamu Julian, an itinerant minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was sent by his church to Blount County as the first missionary. In 1833 Isom, his wife Betsy, two daughters, and four of his five sons moved to McMinn County. It was also the area claimed in 1825 by his father-in-law, Robert Patterson.

Isom’s claim, described in terms of the Hiwassee surveys, is range 1 east (section 32, T4 R1E), southwest of section 32, township 4, running about 3 miles east of the north-south meridian of Hiwassee county. Athens, Tennessee.

Julian identifies the farm claim of Isom’s son George, who was also an itinerant minister. George confirmed this claim when he married Morning Smith in 1836. George’s son Robert Patterson Julian married a Bond woman. Julian found previous claims for both the Smith Farm and the Bond Farm, but was unable to locate them.

Road And Bridge Program

The only map he found that showed both the current Hiwassee survey grid and the features of the land was a 1994 map of the Cherokee National Forest. Julian was told by the GIS office at the McMinn County Courthouse that there was no accurate record of the location of the Hiwassee grid lines.

However, an examination of aerial photographs, such as the online World Imagery Basemap , reveals that the old survey lines are still visible on the ground as boundaries between fields and forests. Interspersed with later subdivisions, it stretches for miles in a checkerboard pattern. In order to accurately determine his ancestral claim, these squares must be identified.

Ebitta’s GIS students worked with him to track down these claims. They used the Create Fishnet tool in ArcMap 10.1 to create a uniform grid of one-mile square polygons. The students then matched the fishing net to the cut lines on the 1994 map of the Cherokee National Forest. By looking at current aerial photographs, students were able to deduce where individual sections and townships numbered in 1851 were located. This led to the conclusion that Isom’s claim is where the city of Etowah, Tennessee is located today. However, this meant that his ancestors farmed on hillsides that were not suitable for subsistence farming.

Julien then notices T6 R1W with the 1825 claim of Isom’s father-in-law Robert Patterson. The 1851 map did not have T6. Julien obtained a copy of the 1836 tax map of McMinn County from the Tennessee State Library and Archives. The 1836 township numbering was shown to be different from the 1851 numbering shown on the 1994 National Forest Map.

Interactive Maps And Gis Resources

After this discrepancy was taken into account, students were able to find the actual location of the claims of Isom and George, as well as James Smith and Peter Bond (whose children married into the Julian family). All claims were located six miles north of the location previously identified. The claims were actually on agricultural land and were spaced one to three miles apart within a courtesy distance. Julian realized that if Isom had chosen another farm, he wouldn’t be here.

A student used georeferencing and aerial photography to identify land claims owned by George Julian and his brothers in and near Tyner, Tennessee.

Between 1839 and 1842, George and his brothers Samuel and Marcena moved from McMinn County and claimed new land in Hamilton County. These claims were filed in Fractional Township 5N, R3W on the Ocoee County Meridian, which runs near Cleveland, Tennessee. As towns formed in the area, Julian’s lands joined the towns of Tyner and Chattanooga.

Julian’s father inherited one of George’s original grant deeds. In libraries in Cleveland and Chattanooga, Tennessee, Julian found microfilm records of these land grants. He obtained a grant map (circa 1842) from the Tennessee State Library and Archives, but unfortunately no land features were shown.

North Carolina County Map

Grant’s map (ca. 1842) (left) is overlaid with a 1928 platbook map, with grid corners marked for georeference. George Julian’s reconstructed plot (right) in Tyner, Tennessee. On the World Pictorial Base Map, grants around 1842 are shown in green, and those from 1858-1879 are shown in green. annual grants are shown in yellow.

However, a huge and rare 1928 plat book found at the Chattanooga Public Library contained both the Ocoee Survey Grid and recent features of the area. It is clear from the figure that the current grade of Tyner Road in the Ocoee District survey is 20 degrees. A GIS student used ArcMap to georeference an old grant map to current street intersections and obtained digitized images from a plat book.

By 1850, George had sold his original land north of Tyner and moved west of the Tennessee River. Most records of these transactions were lost after Federal forces passed through the area following the nearby Battle of Missionary Ridge in November 1863. In 1858, George returned to Tyner County. He purchased land in Tyner Center, where he lived during the war, and in 1870 moved to Bradley County.

Geo-indicated reconstruction of Tyner and nearby George Land.

Usgs North Carolina Wsc

Burke county gis map, johnston county gis map, rutherford county nc gis map, rutherford county gis tn, rutherford county gis, rutherford gis, rutherford co nc gis, rutherford co gis, rutherford nc gis, clay county gis map, rutherford county tn gis map, rutherford county nc gis