Counties

There are 3141 active counties, 947 obsolete, and 208 renamed in the United States all dating from the mid-1600s to the year 2000. This is the data found in AniMap.

New Counties

New counties were unorganized, assigned to an organized county for judicial and government purposes. This means until the county is fully organized, records are found here.

Locations

It is known locations did not move throughout history, however, county boundaries did often leaving you searching in the wrong county depending on the date of the event.

AniMap – The Story

Posted on by aallord

The reason I created AniMap version 4.0, the people who came before me.

  • Adrian Ettlinger – Traveled to every county in the U. S. because he wanted to collect the history of county boundary changes of every county.
  • Art Lassange – Wrote AniMap up to version 3.0.2. Created every bitmap file displayed to users.
  • John Long – Academic dataset spanning centuries of American geography.

I discovered AniMap late in 2021. Current version, system requirements, Windows 98. I was running Windows 11 virtually on my Mac. I reached out before purchase, asking if it runs on this environment. Virtual using Apple’s M-series processor. The response, a link to download it. They requested I test it to confirm it would work before purchase. Results, it worked.

I played a bit, saw the power it has in solving hard to find record areas. Things were always in the same geographical position but boundaries around that place changed. This, highly leads to searching in the wrong area.

Then I discovered John Long’s massive accomplishments with the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Ideas started forming. Then hit, hard.

I contacted Mark, who sent me the link offering to bring AniMap into the 21st century. This concept was using the vision of Art and Adrian, with the dataset of John Long and a new UI to bring it to life. Mark accepted my volunteering to carry his father’s and Adrian’s legacy forward.

Work began. It started with taking pictures of published books of John Long. Hand shading then including in the start of AniMap 4.0. Then I found the data on Newberry’s website. Free, open to everything. A mission began.

I downloaded the large state files of each county boundary change in one file. Opened it in Google Earth then manually exported and named with my decided naming convention. All 8,771 files, one at a time.

For data extraction on open HTML pages. During the file processing I found George Mike. He volunteered to write a DOM parsing script that would export the data in my format directly to Google Sheets. That allowed me to simply import the data and eliminate the manual entry already started. Result, George Mike saved me hours beyond measure, wanted nothing in return. So for his time, consideration and my appreciation; a $35 coffee and subscription to his table exporter plugin.

Real result, major progress was just about ready to begin. File export remaining, simple import for database structure. Coding began.

During development Mark and his brother lost their Mom. I received the news with an offer to give me rights to AniMap. AniMap LLC was born. A very sad moment for everyone. But trust was born to give me rights knowing I would carry legacies forward. That is forever irreplaceable.

Art, Adrian, John Long their work is owed someone to carry it forward. That alone drives the AniMap users use today. Never was it, nor ever will it be money as the drive.

I took legacies to carry forward. I am simply the engine making it work. They earned the spotlight, I don’t want or need it. Users tell me silently, goal achieved.

Now you know. AniMap LLC is not a corporation you may visualize. AniMap LLC is my wife who learned to test everything. And all those email addresses, support, etc. Well those are all answered by me. Each account created by my hand. Because I won’t open it up for risks to third party access to your data. That is not mine to do. You do have the right to know I protect you and your data.

AniMap 5.0, currently being developed. Massive improvements coming for the user experience. Expanded noting more geared for professional level research. Yet, an interface a novice can understand and use.

Now, my most difficult thing to explain. I too do not like the subscription model. My goal is to one day remove it entirely ending my story with AniMap as open source. However, that is a long and tangled road. It will take time to remove things I pay for currently. Remove some third party rendering, replace it with my own.

Since you know now we are two people. All work to date has been done with a full time job to pay life’s bills.

The approximate 100 current subscribers. I owe them massive thanks. They keep the additional computer infrastructure out of my daily living expense. Words can never express my gratitude.