Maine Maps
This entry was originally written by Alice Eichholz, Ph.D., CG for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
One superb map can be extensively used for research and traveling, detailing town divisions, geographical details, road surface types, routes of transportation, and locations of cemeteries. This map is the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, which is published in updated versions by DeLorme Publishing of Freeport, Maine.
A bicentennial project edited by Gerald E. Morris entitled The Maine Bicentennial Atlas and Historical Survey (Portland: Maine Historical Society, 1976) is a superb composite of historical maps from the earliest grants and charters to the present. Railroad, lumbering, mining, recreation, population changes, court regions, and election districts illustrate the depth of this resource for genealogical purposes.
Atwood's Length and Breadth of Maine (see Background Sources for Maine) includes helpful maps of towns. Maine State Archives has a computerized index of its fine map collection for Maine after statehood, but it is the Massachusetts State Archives (see Massachusetts Archives, Libraries, and Societies) that holds the important lotting maps for the pre-statehood development of Maine. Included in many of the maps are location of residences and names of owners.
Saco Valley Publishing, 76 Main St., Fryeburg, ME 04037, has been reprinting excellent county editions of nineteenth-century maps indicating occupants' names for each structure.
An online gazetteer of the state of Maine is available at Ancestry.com.
