As I write this, I am enjoying the first signs of spring and making plans for a busy summer. I want to visit some old family farms to take photos before greenery covers the remains of the foundations. Spring is always the best time to visit them. Under the weight of snow, last year’s vegetation has collapsed and formed itself over the rocks, and the new greenery hasn’t covered it yet. In addition, the angle of the sun is still a little lower than it will be in summer. Those angles create revealing shadows, which enhance the foundation’s outlines.
The County Registry of Deeds has a variety of maps that can help you figure out where to look for the foundations. One of the most helpful, in Maine, is the Colby Atlases from the 1880s. These atlases were done for several, if not all Maine counties and show where the buildings were in each town at the time. These maps are available at many libraries and online on Ancestry as well. I used a combination of family lore, old census records, and the Colby map of Piscataquis County to find the old Brawn homesteads off the Sebec Shores Road. At the time it was called the Back City Road, which cracks me up, considering it is out in the middle of nowhere on the way to Sebec Lake. At the time, though, it was a small community with its own school, and was situated roughly halfway between Dover and Guilford.
Ancestry is available for free at most Maine libraries, and I found Arthur Brawn’s map page by accident on an ordinary search for his records. It was listed under A. Brawn on the database titled “U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918.” It turned out to be the Colby Atlas page of his property in Foxcroft on outer North Street. But once I found that page, I clicked through the map until I found the page I wanted in Guilford.
Ancestry is also available in two-week free trials (a one-time offer, so be prepared to make the most of it if you use the offer), and in monthly subscriptions if you don’t want to commit to it. The Colby Atlas is the one I know, but there probably are other maps which do the same thing for different eras.
The LDS Family History Center in Bangor gives you access to a truly fabulous map program for maps from all over, including Maine, of course.
Now is also a good time of year to find headstones lost to time, just remember to prepare for mud and rough footing as the ground is still settling into place. Even if foundations are gone, those VintageAerial.com photos may at least help you find rock wall outlines. The walls have often tumbled but are revealed in thin lines of trees, which grow among their remains.
Vestiges of the past may still exist, and now is the time to prepare the groundwork for those treasured finds.
Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft is a longtime genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader emails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com. Her semimonthly column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society which meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center at 6:30 p.m. Guests are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
