Reconstructing a 19th-Century Riverside Community with Historical GIS - EMF 2026

Hello, I'm Heidi. I'm a librarian, UX designer, and plotter artist. But these days, I work as a professional genealogologist. I research family histories through archives, census records, parish registers, and sometimes DNA. Um, recently I've used GIS to map individuals and add them to family trees. Before I started in sorry, before genealogy, I worked in UX design across um various industries. I hold a master's in library and information science with a focus on organizing information and access. And today I want to demonstrate how I integrated my research into a single project. I relied on a 19th century tithe map, a road along the river Hamble and 80 years worth of records. By aligning these sources, I identified how families and relationships persisted across generations. I mentioned I'm a sometimes plotter artist. My husband and I run Forge and Craft, our studio at Wimbledon Art Studios. We experiment with technology mostly using pen plotters. This weekend we're here alongside Hack Wimbledon and we brought some of our plotters and equipment. If you want to um see them, say hello, talk about genealogy, you're welcome to stop by. Um so how did all this begin? Last November, I completed a post-graduate diploma in genealogical, paleographic, and heraldic studies at the University of Strathclyde. The work I'm sharing today formed the basis of my dissertation. I was curious whether mapping people geographically rather than only through family trees would reveal insights that the documents alone couldn't provide. Before I got into the process uh get into the process, I want to define a few terms I'll use throughout the rest of the talk. GIS is a system for capturing, storing, analyzing, and displaying spatial data. I use QGIS for this. It's free, open source, and has um support for beginners like me. HGIS or historical GIS is a subset of GIS that uses historical data to analyze change over time and place. Um, a georreerence map is one that is aligned with modern coordinates. There are reliable sources for georreerence maps. If you're interested in historical ordinance survey maps, for example, um, the National Library of Scotland is the first place I'd look. A raster layer is a scanned map image incorporated into GIS software. If the map isn't georreerenced yet, you can add geographic coordinates yourself using the software by selecting reference points. The shapes and points you draw on your maps are vector data. These include points, lines, and polygons. Vectors, vector layers are powerful tools when working with mapping software. I think your limit your imagination is is the the limit when visualizing your data using these layers. And in this case, when I say plot, I'm actually referring to a numbered feature or section on my original tithe map that I followed during the study. Um, I will explain tithe maps a little bit more in detail later, but I have included information about them in the resources link I will share at the end of the presentation. So, I often switch between the plot numbers and the modern names. Most modern names for the properties in my study weren't used throughout the research. Um, so now most of the properties can be linked to their current names. I find it easier to visualize the names rather than numbers. So I I use them interchangeably. So my research is centered on Berseralden, a parish in the river h um on the river Hamble between Southampton and Portsmith. Historically, it was a ship building village renowned for constructing HMS Elephant in 1744, which later served as Nelson's flagship. By 1840, when my study begins, um, ship building was already in decline and the local economy had shifted focus to agriculture and other maritime trades. Along the riverside, mariners, boatman, and fishermen lived and worked close together, constantly adapting to change. In 1889, a new railway to Southampton not only changed the landscape of Berserelin, but also altered how people committed and found work. So, I initially attempted to map the entire parish. However, for my case studies, I concentrated on five c cottages along a single road. This is where I will focus today. This road is now called Land's End Road on modern maps, but it was not labeled that way until long after my research period. The road runs around along the river. It serves as a key maritime hub. This photo was taken around 1900, kind of near the end of my research period, and it also features two of my case study locations in the background. Some merchant ships are um visible here and likely resemble those that navigated the river. They were typically wooden sailing ships operated by a master and a mate and often used to deliver goods along England's southern coast to the aisle of white or to France. Some of you may recognize this pub. I don't know. This is um I think the photo itself is actually from the 1980s TV series Howard's Way. I'm an American. I'm less familiar with that reference. The pub, The Jolly Sailor, is located directly on the river. Um, while the TV connection is intriguing, I find the stories of the residents here and along this road even more fascinating. My initial interest in this place was personal. While researching my husband's family, I found in the census that his great-grandfather was living on this road, close to the pub. Um, as a master mariner, he might have found it convenient to live near the river. I wanted to find out precisely which cottage the family lived in and how close it was to the pub. This question led to my dissertation topic. I believe that mapping the families might bring me closer to the answer. I realized the most effective way to understand um the situation was through GIS. I mapped Brazil's residents using the tithe map from around 1840 and census data from around 80 1841 to 1921. In genealogy, we often refer to a fan network which includes friends, associates, and neighbors. In this case, I focused on the neighbors. Family trees often follow a direct lineage, but our real experience encomp encompasses the people in our communities. I began by s seeking a single master mariners's house and eventually map the entire riverside community. The maps reveal community movement and connections that the documents alone didn't show, providing me a much different under um deeper understanding of this road. Um I just want to briefly discuss how I process my data. I'm not a GIS expert. I will say I've learned enough of the software to work with the historical maps and records. Um, in my project, the tithe map for the parish served as my foundation with the tithe aortionments crucial determining people's locations, at least for the years 1839 and 1840 when these maps were produced. The method I followed to import my ties map into the software would be applicable to any other map whether it is a digital scan digital digital image or a scan. The software enables georreerencing of raster images by using alignment points or identified reference points on the map which can then be matched to current landmarks. Um then the software automatically determines the appropriate scale and projection. You can also access pre um georreerenced app sources online, map sources I should say. For example, I mentioned the National Library of Scotland earlier. Their map collection is a valuable resource for early ordinance survey maps and they already have already georreerenced their map scans enabling you to connect them directly into the software. I provided some details about their georreerence maps on my resources page for this talk. In my project, the maps I show you on these slides are either added as a as the raster layer I mentioned or geo reference layers. And I can switch between these layers easily, which makes this really useful. So using the tithe map, I traced each residential um building as a vector shape, allowing me to manipulate them. Um after overlaying my data layers, I kept my data separate from my mass u mapping software, managing all the transcriptions, data extraction, and analysis in Air Table. I exported specific data segments as CSV files. Then I imported them back into my GI GIS software. So I I viewed the mapping software as an extension of my database um where I could integrate the historical data that I was collecting. Here's a tithe map of Berserden around Land's End Road. It's drawn on light um brown paper with some buildings shaded in light orange and others in light gray. After thorough research and data collection from the aortionments, I know that at the time this map was made, the light orange buildings in this village were residential properties. I recommend using the full color versions of these maps where possible. You can find these maps on the genealogologist, which is a commercial genealogy website, but um note that their images are scanned in grayscale. While this collection remains very useful for checking if your area or ancestors appear on the maps, working with a grayscale map can be challenging, especially if you want to inter interpret the maps shaded areas. I did pay for the color maps, but availability and costs vary by county really. Um, I've added some resource information again on the resources page I will share covering tithe maps, what they are, and how you can locate them. So, this here is a tithe aortionment that I mentioned. Um, these act as detailed ledger books indicating the amount of tithe or tax owed at its location. I think they contain valuable data for map enthusiasts such as precise land use descriptions, the types of residences on each plot, and lot sizes, too. So, for my study, the most helpful information were the columns listing the owners and occupiers names at the time of the survey. This allowed me to identify residents even if they were renting or leasing the land. Additionally, each individual was identified by plot number on the corresponding map. So that eliminated any ambiguity. So with my map now imported into the software, I can draw vectors over the relevant shapes to depict the residential buildings in my study. I particularly enjoyed this step. Um I completed the entire parish, but here's a small section with my shapes overlaid on the map. I colored these shapes green to make them more visible. Additionally, I used the software's labeling feature to add my tithe map aortionment data to the vector shapes. Since I was mainly working with heads of households on the maps, I developed various filtering methods in my data set to address this. Without these filters, every resident at a property would be listed, which could become chaotic very quickly. So, I can now utilize my maps for data visualizations that I need. These vectors add another layer you can manipulate typically through linking and filtering. Some basic programming skills can help maximize the safe software's capabilities. At this stage, I was confident I can match the households between the tithe records and the 1841 census. So, I successfully matched 55 households across the entire parish, which was roughly 50% of the households. Variations in names and properties with multiple residences require careful cross referencing. For households with multiple residents, um I split the vectors in half to assign distinct head of household names. I also revisited and refined the data as new information emerged. So this is what an 1841 census looks like um for some of the residents on the this road. These records are notoriously tricky to interpret. They were the first census recorded in England and Wales. They do not provide exact ages, relationship details or p precise birthplaces. Instead, they indicate whether someone was born in a county and um they offer estimated ages. However, they do include professions which can be helpful. And this is an 1851 census by comparison, so 10 years later. By this time, census taking had improved somewhat. You can see more detailed locations, although addresses were still often omitted in rural areas. The data now includes relationships, uh, marital status, ages, professions, and more precise birthplaces. Using my 1851 data, verification to my tithe map reduced the data set to 12 linked households. This reduction in matches is understandable as households have may have moved or heads may have died over the past decade, resulting in family members with different surnames. However, I did find this number low enough to warrant a visual review during which I looked for miss surname variations instead. This approach successfully expanded my the data set by adding 26 more households. This is where I want to stop and note that managing this across an entire parish is extremely challenging. While it's understandable to want to uh want a clear understanding of your population, numerous data factors make a perfect matching nearly impossible. For my dissertation, I had to balance a broader study area with a more focused case study. But if I were to approach this again, I'd likely concentrate more in the smaller area initially and then expand from there. To illustrate the scale of the area, Brazilian's population in 1841 was 523 with 110 households and in 1851 it was 500 with 113 households. Even for a small parish, mapping each household over 80 years is quite an enormous task. So, here's some initial maps I enjoyed creating over overlaying um tithe ve tithe vectors on an ordinance survey map during my research highlight um patterns of property loss or change. So, in this example, there's a homestead in the middle um I'm about to present you. You'll observe a homestead loss. So, look at Alexander McKenzie's homestead in Hackett's farm marked on the tithe map. So, this homestead does not appear in the ordinance survey map surveyed in 1859. So, I've marked it in red, the location where it used to be. What's interesting about examining the census alongside the maps is that I was able to trace Alexander to a different nearby residence in the village. He relocated there with his servants who had earlier lived in another cottage at the bottom of the farm. This eternal internal migration is visible on a map, though it's less apparent between the 1851 and 1841 censuses. Identifying this movement from the census data alone would have been um challenging. The difference between the 1859 and the 1895 ordinance survey maps are more significant primarily due to the railway construction in the village and um shifts in the local economy. So at the bottom of Land's End Road here, we have several small smaller cottages um that have been removed completely. Additionally, you can see a few new buildings have appeared on this parcel. So this indicates some consolidation. There's another out building that was removed around the Jolly Sailor. And then in this area where the railway was constructed constructed, there is a noticeable decrease in the number of cottages compared to earlier maps. When choosing my case studies, I selected five properties on Lansen Road to explore household dynamics. I intentionally avoided the railway corridor since I expected these cottages would be gone during my study. As I mentioned earlier, I use plot numbers and modern names interchangeably, though some properties may not have consistently been known by these names. The cottages starting from the northern part of the road to the bottom include plot 22 elephant boatyard, plot 23 called yours, plot 25, the jolly sailor. Plot 27 is called Myrtle Cottage and then finally at the very bottom of the road is plot 31. It's called Shipin or sometimes it's known as today it's known as Lans End House. A census page may seem like a simple list of names, but connecting those names to specific physical coordinates reveals that these properties were more than static structures. Instead, they were adaptable spaces, some offering half a century of stable family life, while others were continuously repurposed as safety nets for relatives with nowhere else to go. Um, I don't begin at the top of the red road. Instead, I I start with plot 23, now known as URS. In 1840, tithe records ind indicate it was owned and occupied by James Kohl's and his wife Rachel Carpenter. After James' death in 1842, his will left the estate to Rachel for her lifetime and explicitly safeguarded his daughter's shares from any future husband's um financial influence. The household was multigenerational from the beginning. The 1841 census indicates that their daughter Elizabeth Brain and her young son Jane John James Brain were already living there. After Rachel's death in 1852, her estate was herit inherited by her unmarried daughter, Charlotte Kohl's, who had lived independently there her entire life. Charlotte cared for her for the house for many years and upon her death in 1880, she bequafed the property to her nephew John James Brain. John's life illustrated a clear migration pattern. He moved from Bersereldon as a young man, spent 20 years in London, working as a sugar broker and commission agent, and later returned to the family home. By 1891, he was living there once more, leading the household with his unmarried sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah. Here's a photograph of viewers from historic England. It is a listed building, so I imagine it hasn't changed much since the Kohl's and brains live there. The family's hold on the property endured for 50 years during my study period, primarily through the female lineage. The hold ended after 1891 when John's health deteriorated um leading to his admission to the county lunatic asylum where he inevitably died. I believe the house remained unoccupied for the rest of my study period. I couldn't find any other household in the census record after John's death. Since this family had lived here for so long though, it provided a baseline on the map for comparing changes along the rest of the road. Right next to yours is a jolly sailor, which I've mentioned, serving as a local social and commercial center of the riverfront. Since census takers seldom recorded precise street addresses here, the pub also served as a reliable landmark for locating nearby neighbors. The property illustrates how local residents adjusted their livelihoods over time. Charles Darvis, the owner, began in 1841 as a sawyer or probably a barrel maker. He quickly moved into brewing and pub ownership after that. Um, gradually expending his property over the years. In 1875, the property was um the center of a significant probate dispute. Following his wife Sarah's death, Charles, realizing his own death was near, quickly rewrote his will on his deathbed. He had no children and his wife um with his wife gone, the estate would normally pass to his eldest nephew who is also called Charles Jarvis. Um he would have been considered the legal heir. However, Charles bypassed him by creating a new will that left the pub to his great grand nephew Charles Bevvis who had been living in the household as a servant but probably a brewery apprentice and divided the rest of the estate among 12 nieces and nephews. The court records show a messy probate fight over his mental capacity um at the on this day revealing that Jarvis told his gathered relatives, I have left you all something. Don't quarrel. Charles and Sarah were buried together in a church cemetery on the same day as their deaths were only days apart. U this is a jolly sailor again. It is also a listed building, still a working pub by the same name today. The court confirmed the well and Charles Bevvis operated the pub until 1891 after which he left the trade to become a laborer and farmer in Swanik across the river. Management was then handed over to Hunite, an outsider reloc who relocated from Swanmore to Dublin before ultimately settling at the Jolly Sailor where he spent at least 30 years as an inkeeper and market gardener. Next to the pub is Myrtle Cottage. While a typical map might show it as a single residence, historical records reveal it as shared by two workingass class families between 1841 and 1871. One part was occupied by Solomon Bevvis, a fisherman and lighterman, while the other was occupied by the Wallace family, headed by Phyllis Wall Wallace, formerly Turner. For decades, the census names Phyllis as the head of her household. But her husband Richard Ballis was away working as a rope maker in port sea dockyards. So she managed the household locally, often through agricultural fieldwork as necessary. The key connection here though is the landlord. In 1846, the cottage was auctioned and bought by Charles Jarvis, the owner of the Jolly Sailor. This made Jarvis not only the publican, but also the landlord of his neighbors. Um, this includes Solomon Bevis through marriage. Bevvis was also the grandfather of the young man Jarvis selected to inherit the pub. The family relationships helped sustain an informal succession. So here's Myrtle College around 2001. This is the last of the listed properties on our road. I also recently found out you can rent this as an Airbnb. So after Solomon and Phyllis aged out, the cottage was occupied solely by Joseph Wilshire, Phyllis's nephew and also Solomon's relative through marriage. Joseph worked as a river mariner and fairyman for 30 years. By 1921, the teny had been inherited by his son-in-law, William James, who managed the property and supported Joseph's el uh Joseph's elderly widow, Margaret, under the same roof. Further along, plot 31, also known as the ship in, illustrates a significant shift from a commercial property to a busy multif family residence. In the 1840s, Thomas Harkort was the first um I I'll say publican um succeeded by John Wilshire who ran it as a licensed fixer. By 1861, the building appears to have ceased functioning as a formal inn and transitioned into a shared residence. The 1861 census lists four different surnames, Wilshire, Turner, Brock, and Talbot. As residents in the census, they are shown either as separate households or as individual lodgers. However, when mapped against their family trees, a strong network of kinship becomes evident. John Wilshire, whom I consider the patriarch of the property, lived here with his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Goddard, previously Turner, um, who at one point served as his housekeeper. Also present was Elizabeth's brother, William Turner, a water laborer married into the Brock family, and Mary um and Mary Talbot, an unmarried sister of his wife listed as receiving alms from the parish. This um this house has been known by several names. The ship in the ship and launch locally I think it's called the cast um castle house. Today it's known as Lanzen House. It stands as a grand residence with continued easy access to the river. These families intentionally use the old in space to gather resources and shelter their vulnerable relatives. I also suspect that although not explicitly mentioned in the records, this house also served as an important stop for passing mariners. The photo of the house shows not only its size but also the easy access to the river. The house sold for 1.6 6 million in 2003, likely a remarkable amount for these previous residents. Finally, we have the Elephant Boatyard. It's at the north end of the road, a historic site where the warship HMS Elephant was constructed in 1744. In the 1840s, it belonged to Master Mariner, William Holyman. After 1841, Holyman relocated his residence to Southampton and Milbrook, leaving the boatyard vacant for about 30 years. I suspect William probably primarily used this property for commercial reasons, perhaps as a storage location for his ship or um fleet after moving. By 1881, the property reappears as a residence with some familiar residents returning. Charles Goddard, a lifelong sailor, moves in with his elderly mother, Elizabeth, the same Elizabeth Turner from the last case study. Elizabeth was widowed by Levi Godard, and the family had earlier lived at plot 31. Remember, she was also John Wilser Wilshire's sister-in-law at that location. Additionally, Charles's widowed niece, Sarah Clemens, formerly Goddard, lives here with with her own her own household. She works as a needlewoman and raises four young children. Sarah's parents are Levi Goddard Jr. and Maryanne Bucket, making Elizabeth her grandmother. The key connection occurs between 1891 and 1901 when John Wilshshire Jr. moves into the boatyard with his wife, Maryanne Bucket. Decades earlier, in 1851, Maryanne managed her own household at the shipin, while her first husband, Levi Goddard, Jr., was at sea. Her marriage to John Wilshire Jr., the son of the former ship ins publican and patriarch, and her move to the boatyard further embedded the Goddard and Wilshshire families. They formed a large blended blended family that used the property to support stepg grandandchildren, widowed sons and daughters and other relatives. During periods of economic hardship, they adapted by using the boatyard's residential space to strengthen their kinship network and extended along the road. Elephant Boatyard remains an active ship building site today. It's hard to get a clear view of the house or its historical appearance because it's blocked by the commercial property on the riverside. However, satellite image shows its location, illustrating how advantageous this spot would have been to those involved in the maritime trades. Um, so mapping the residents of these five properties reveals that the families on land were not isolated. Apart from the Kohl's in our initial case study, the others Jarvis, Bev, Bevvis, Turner, Wilshire, and Goddard and their extended families were deeply connected through blood and marriage. This is one of my favorite charts from my dissertation. It's a descendant chart illustrating the tur Turner Wilshire Goddard kinship network which is the largest from my research. While it might resemble a fan chart to genealogologists, it focuses on descendants rather than ancestors. Um, we start with Elizabeth Turner's parents at the center, the earliest rooted couple from the branch. The chart uses color coding to indicate which properties were occupied by specific household heads within the network. Of my five properties, three are prominently visible throughout the study period. For years, traditional demographic history suggested that modern developments push rural populations into isolated nuclear family units. However, examining this community geographically reveals the opposite. These families depended on intricate extended kinship networks to adapt and thrive within a shifting maritime economy. Census structures in rural comm communities often don't accurately represent living arrangements due to missing addresses or unclear property boundaries. For instance, nearby households at plot 31 might appear as separate cottages even if they are part of a single large um property with four to five households sharing a support network. Oh, and I nearly forgot. Was my husband's great-grandfather among that those featured in this case studies? The answer is no. However, my research helped me refine my hypothesis about his possible residence. I believe he was likely in the railway corridor. They didn't relocate far, just across the across the river to Swanig into the same row of cottages where my mother-in-law was born and by coincidence where Charles Bevis, the former owner of the Jolly Sailor Pub, also lived after he gave up the business. If I were to continue this research now, the next logical step would be to systematically shift focus to that railway corridor and apply this method again with a new group of cottages. I want to be entirely transparent about my approach. This process can be quite demanding. Historical GIS isn't just a matter of inputting data into software and letting a map appear on its own. Mapping this one road over 80 years involves reconstructing the life stories of each neighbor and extended family member. It requires overcoming data barriers, managing name variations, locating wills, and consulting registers to verify census info. Expanding to a whole parish is a huge labor intensive task. Balancing broad geographic scope with detailed local studies. The effort though radically transforms our historical data model showing that properties are dynamic and evolve in response to community economic needs. A key contribution of this work is demon is the demonstration of how spatial analysis and property based methods can aid genealogical and historical research. It encourages expanding the focus beyond the immediate family and extends our research into areas that map community interests using tools that complement family trees to explore spatial dynamics. Thank you. Um, [applause]