When I start researching a new place, the geography is one of the first things I look into. I find that the more I know about an area's geography, the easier it is for me to verify records. Until recently, I never realized how important it is to understand how the population of a community varied over time. Im not just talking about when the area was settled, but more so how the demographics shifted every 5 or 10 years.
What can be learned?
There are many things that can be learned from studying the geographic history of a region, but I only plan to focus on the four main ones.
1. Border changes
Over time the borders of parishes, communities, counties, and even countries are subject to change. These changing borders can make it confusing to tell if you have the right person in every record. What I like to do is save a few different maps showing the borders so that I can quickly reference them. I also like to draw a rough sketch of the map on a post-it note and plot out the communities located within a set region. Note that the post-it is not an exact map, rather just a quick reference point that does not contain any formal borders.
One example that highlights this is how my ancestor (who never moved) had his farm registered in three different towns on three consecutive census years. By referencing the maps, I learned that he was located where these three towns intersected and therefore, small boarder changes resulted in his farm being registered in different towns.
2. Neighbouring communities
This is heavily related to the changing borders as even a small border change may make it appear that your ancestor has moved to the next town over. The other reason why I like to look into the neighbouring communities is because many small towns lacked all the services that our ancestors relied on. When understanding the importance of this one, I like to think back on a story my grandfather told me. When he was growing up, the town only had a single one room school house. When that burned down, the families had no choice but to load their kids into wagons and send them to school in the next town over until a new school could be built.
3. Immigration/migration patterns
The reason why I love this one so much is that it can inadvertently answer one of our brick wall genealogical questions. People like to travel in packs especially when they are fleeing from something. Take the Highland Scots as one example of this. One of my ancestors became part of a convoy that left the Highlands on foot following the clearances, then boarded a ship for Canada. When the ship docked, he continued with that same group and eventually set up a homestead in the same community as them. Although it is not a stead fast rule, if you see you ancestor moving to an area during one of these immigration waves, the odds are that they are from the same place of origin.
4. Religious/personal beliefs
Today when we think about a group of people living near each other that share a religious belief, we often end up thinking of a cult. However, this was often times not the case for our ancestors. Throughout history there have been many examples of religious persecution. When the persecuted group flees their country of origin, they often travel in a group (much like the immigration patterns described above). What differentiates this from migration patterns is best described by the following example.
In the early 1870's one of my ancestors moved his family to the small community of Temperance Vale, NB. When I looked this location up on a map it made sense. Every community that the family had previously been connected to was located less than hour away so I didnt think much of the move. When I started researching the history of Temperance Vale, I realized that their decision to move may not have been because of farm land, but rather their beliefs.
Just as the name suggests, Temperance Vale was a community that was settled (abt 1860) at the height of New Brunswick's Temperance Movement. The inhabitants of the Vale had strong beliefs about banning the consumption of alcohol. Much of the population were Baptists (mainly of Dutch origin), who because of religious reasons, were teetotal.
As I began to contrast my ancestor and his family against this history I realized that what I knew lined up perfectly. He was half Dutch (his mother's side of the family being Loyalists from New York), and like the majority of the population, he was Baptist. It is not much a stretch to believe that he would have moved his family so that they could be surrounded by others who shared in their beliefs.
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