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Colrain 1858 House Names Project

How many Colrain 1858 houses still exist?   The 1858 map of Colrain is the oldest "complete" map-it shows every road and every house with its owners name.   To answer "how many still exist"  we will make a list based on house numbers written on copies of the old map - sections ("Maplets") available here.   Ideally, a helper would print out their Maplet section of the worksheet , write current names on it, and send me a picture of the marked-up Maplet so the names can be added to the database. ***OR***, the helper could type in the names themselves into the list - a Google Sheets online file( SEE BELOW).
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The 1860 Census

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 The 1860 US Census also records every house in Gill.  The Census was taken over the course of 4 days: Friday, June 1 through Tuesday June 5.  On Sunday the 3rd of June, no records were taken. There are 18 pages of census records, each with 40 entries.  The census taker assigned each dwelling place a number, and each family was also numbered.  The name, sex, age and place of birth of each person in the household were recorded, as well as the occupation of each person over the age of 15.  The census taker also asked for the values of the Real Estate and Personal Estate. Additional items recorded were whether a person was recently married, or whether a child had attended school within the past year.  There is even a section to record whether a person was deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or a convict. In the record shown above, the first house visited belonged to John Clark, a 64 year old male who was a blacksmith.  This house included a se...
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Gill 1858 Map Project

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 The 1858 map of Gill (MA)  is the oldest "complete" map of town. It shows every road and names every house and business.       ****The Project is to find out how many of the 1858 houses are still standing, and to create a database of all the old house sites.   **** Many have burned or otherwise "vanished", but how many are still here? As of this posting, we have the locations of 56 buildings from the 1858 map that are still in use.  Are there more?     (see "maplets" at the bottom here with houses we have "found"). There is also a list - see link  2 screens below) To make the list we numbered every house site on the 1858 map.  Then we will write the 2024 house owner on a scan of this "worksheet".  Becky Minor of Center Road is the author of this project. Becky started by with the MACRIS online list of historic places in Gill (1979 Inventory funded by the Mass.) , and, with online tax maps from Mass GIS, m...
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