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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun- Google Maps of Ancestral Homes

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  Identify an ancestral home address ( preferably one with a street address...) for one of your ancestral families (You do know where they lived, don't you?  If not, consult the 1900 to 1940 US Census records, or City Directories).

2)  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) and enter the street address (and city/town if necessary - usually you can pick from a list) for your selected ancestral home.

3)  Look at the street map, the satellite map, and the street view.  Zoom in or out, or manipulate the image as you wish.

4)  Tell us or show us your map images in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

5)  Do you have maps and street view pictures for all of your known ancestral homes? 


It was a little hard to find a home address that wasn't changed or a house that wasn't demolished.  But, I have found one.  I choose to look at my great grandparents Anthony and Clara Armstead's apartment in which at 773 Lexington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. they lived together with their three sons from 1940 to around 1961-2.

Here is the street view of the apartment. As I scrolled through the timeline of older view photos taken, I saw there had been several changes made from the earliest photo which was taken in May of 2012 to November 2020. There was a renovation period to the apartment. Also, I saw the house number on the bottom floor. So, Anthony and Clara most likely lived on the bottom floor. 






Here is the map view of the apartment.







Finally, here is the satellite view.



I went to look for older photos of the apartment, so I went to Viewing NYC Tax Photos in One Step. I typed in the borough, house number, and street. Two results came up. A photo in the 1980s and the late 1930s to early '40s. The 1980's photo is very hard to see and it looks like it is demolished. The 1930s photo looks very similar to the 2012 photo. It's nice to looks what the apartment looked like around when they moved there.



Thanks for reading,





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  1. TeresaApril 4, 2021 at 5:22 PM

    My ancestral homes are all in England and Europe - I love seeing these American examples! The apartment building looks like it's in a nice residential area with lots of trees...not always what I imagine when I think of the NYC area (I've only ever been to a hotel near Central Park.

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