Using Geoportal Maps for Genealogy

https://acts3.geoportail.lu/urplang/PNG/DALHEIM/DALHEIM_1812_D2.png

If you’ve hung out with me for any length of time, you’ll know that I love delving into maps when exploring my family history. If you do too, look at Geoportal to explore your ancestor locations.

​The Geoportal site which I’ve used primarily for Luxembourg locations, provides a map of the country which you can filter down to a location within a village or town with the outlines of the building locations or the parcels of land displayed. That is cool enough if you happen to know where your ancestors lived—perhaps using census records or some other document that provides an address. I know that my research in France has been helpful because almost every birth, marriage or death record includes the individual’s address including the apartment or house number.
 
In the example below, I looked for Filsdorf, Luxembourg. In the dropdown from the search, there were a few choices, and I randomly chose one as I could then see the village and move around the map to find the area where my people lived. Here’s what that looks like.

The village of Filsdorf, Luxembourg

Closeup of the village location in Filsdorf, Luxembourg

​In the upper right-hand corner, there is a blank box surrounded by red, if you click on this you can see that you can choose different types of map views of this location. 

View of the buildings in this location.

If we wanted to see what the area looked like today, we could view the actual buildings from above. In my case the building 751/3897 is an empty lot today. 

This is what that area looked like many years ago. You can see there was a building at one time, but it has since been taken down. To get to this older view choose Historical Cadastral from the Cadastral Layers under the Layers section (left side of screen). If you don’t see the choice of Layers, look at the bottom of the screen, you will see the choices: Layers, My Maps, Information, Legends, and Routing.

DALHEIM_1812_D2.png (12030×7979) (geoportail.lu) Here’s a direct link to this entire map. https://acts3.geoportail.lu/urplang/PNG/DALHEIM/DALHEIM_1812_D2.png

To find other countries, search for geoportail and the country name. For example, France is Géoportail (geoportail.gouv.fr).
I hope you have fun exploring these maps and have great luck finding your family’s village and home. Happy navigating!