Political and topographical reference maps are certainly useful for finding your way around the world of your ancestors, but for specific information about your own family tree it is best to find cadastral maps such as “plat” or “plan” maps and large-scale historical maps and atlases containing directories of names. In their basic forms cadastral maps show outlines of land parcels as determined by surveys, and the parcels are usually named or numbered to match legal property and taxation records. These maps often ignore topographical features except where they are important for identifying property lines. They also show restrictions and easements on rights to land, and more elaborate cadastral maps may include buildings and property, information on taxes and property values, and sometimes the names of owners.
Even in a predominately rural area such as Prince Edward Island, genealogical research will inevitably lead to cities where you will find new challenges for finding your ancestor’s addresses. Most urban lots were too small to leave space for recording names, and instead researchers usually look for street addresses and property numbers that link to cadastral lists in census manuscripts and land records. Some of the best maps to use for finding specific properties in urban areas include ward maps, birds eye view maps, and fire insurance maps. Although they did not include names, fire insurance maps can tell you a great deal about your ancestor’s home such as its location, construction materials, and how it compared with other homes in the neighbourhood (Boylan).
Once the general location of an ancestor’s property is known, comprehensive maps such as the 1863 Lake Map, Meacham’s 1880 Illustrated Atlas, and the 1926 Cummins Atlas are excellent ways to determine if anyone by that name lived in the location in those years. The Meacham Companion is a reference book available at the Robertson Library that indexes all names in the Illustrated Atlas and links them to sectors on a grid map (Enman). Another way to determine roughly where on PEI your ancestor lived is by searching the Master Name Index which often identifies lot numbers. This index is held at the Public Archives and Records Office, and it appears in digitized form on the PEI Genealogical Society website. If your ancestor’s name is found in one of the atlases, then it would be useful to set parameters around the dates the person lived in this location by determining if he or she appeared in cadastral maps created in other years.
For this, researchers should consult the manuscript cadastral maps and plans of individual lots and communities. These maps were originally held in the Land Records Office. Maps dating earlier than 1900 are now stored in the Public Archives and Records Office, and many digitized versions will be available on Island Imagined. The maps and plans are descriptive records that were designed to connect leases, deeds, purchase payments, and tax payments to individual properties and their occupants. They exist in varying quality and quantities, and some geographic areas have greater coverage than others. It is relatively simple to search the collection to determine if your ancestor’s residence will have cadastral maps beyond the atlases mentioned above. The maps are indexed by lot number, so once you identify the general lot where your ancestor appeared (The Meacham Companion and Master Name Index are excellent starting points), you can quickly determine the scale and scope of manuscript maps in the Archives’ collection.
The manuscript maps contain many markings and in most cases these lead to a ledger index showing the tax, lease, or property information for the head of household in each parcel. Information on other residents can then often be gleaned through family wills and probate records.