52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge 7

The newest [week 7] challenge for the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy is:

"Play with Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.




This challenge runs from Saturday, 13 February 2010 through Friday, 19 February 2010."

Well, this was one challenge I absolutely loved!!!

I input three of my known addresses as a child. And actually came up with the 4th place as well!!!

The program is easy to operate, and I found it ALOT of fun!

By inputing the address, I was taken to the satellite view. By switching to the street view, I was literally taken to a point where I was standing in the middle of the street viewing the address.

With simple manipulation you can move up and down the street, and even onto the lot where the address is located.

One simple thing I wish Google would do is make it possible to save the photo's!!! However, you can print and then scan them. While the quality is "poor" for a snapshot, it does give me a snapshot I would otherwise not have of the homes where I lived as a child!

Here is the home where I spent most of my growing up years, located at 4600 Krick Street in Norfolk, Virginia [yep, my Daddy was a sailor in the US Navy!!!]. It was located on the corner of Krick and Early Streets. Unfortunately the beautiful holly bushes that Daddy had at the fron of the house are gone now, as are the crepe myrtle trees that lined Early street, and the Blue Mountain Fir that Mama and Daddy had planted in the front yard. But the house is basically unchanged. Even the 6-foot chain-link fence is in the back that Mama and Daddy put up for our beloved German Shepherd's, Angel and Uhla.
 
[I hated to leave there! I cried and begged my Mama and Daddy to send me to boarding school! I did not want to move to the country! - I HATED the country back then!] I used to fantasize about one day buying the house and living there again. Sometimes I still do!
 
This exercise evoked a ton of memories! As I "walked" around the houses where I grew up, I recalled so many things I thought I'd forgotten! There was the little duplex we lived at when my baby sister was born! Then the little cottage one block from the beach where we lived when my Grandma Bean came to live with us. Then the little house we lived at when I went to first grade! And lastly here, where we lived until I started high school.
 
Thanks GeneaBloggers for this walk down Memory Lane!