I’m also a big fan of the National Library of Scotland’s database of maps and can spend hours playing with it. Do you know the Google Ngram viewer for word history? It gives you a graph of frequency over time so you can see when a particular word spikes.
I created an exact timeline for an ancestors 1816 move from Ohio to Illinois and in so doing needed an exact weather timeline as well. I quickly realized the Brits did a better job of recording weather in Europe than their American cousins. Nevertheless, there was a surprising amount of newspaper reporting that allowed me reconstruct the year of unusual weather.
I’m also a big fan of the National Library of Scotland’s database of maps and can spend hours playing with it. Do you know the Google Ngram viewer for word history? It gives you a graph of frequency over time so you can see when a particular word spikes.
That sounds very useful - thank you for the tip.
I created an exact timeline for an ancestors 1816 move from Ohio to Illinois and in so doing needed an exact weather timeline as well. I quickly realized the Brits did a better job of recording weather in Europe than their American cousins. Nevertheless, there was a surprising amount of newspaper reporting that allowed me reconstruct the year of unusual weather.