Getting to know the places your ancestors lived, both physically and sociologically, can enhance your research, fleshing out the names and dates, and also can help suggest new ways to find further information.
Since my research on my ancestry has focused on Scotland and New England, my examples are going to be drawn from those areas. If you know of a local gem for another area ~ please share!
Obviously, the best way to get to know the area your ancestors lived is to go there.
But that's not always possible. So what else can a long-distance researcher do?
On-line communities:
Rootsweb mailing lists still exist ;-) While most are less active than in their heyday back in the era of slow dial-up access, there are hundreds of email lists at Rootsweb that focus on a particular place. Even if the list is no longer really active, archives can be searched. I know from personal experience that the EssexRoots list (later transitioning to MAEssex when Rootsweb standardized list names for places) is a treasure trove of information about genealogy for Boston's North Shore.
One of my favorite resources for Scottish research is the forum at Talking Scot. Again, immense knowledge of both Scottish places and Scottish genealogy there ;-)
Another resource: Facebook. Yup, Facebook. I follow someone who posts old pictures of Edinburgh (the page Beautiful Edinburgh has modern photos, but many are of older buildings...so also worth following for the pretty pictures), as well as a community for memories of Leith. The Leith memories are in general more recent than my grandparents' childhoods there, but it still gives me a feel for the area.
The church in Leith where my grandparents met (and, yes, it also has a Facebook page...):
Off-line communities:
Local historical societies and family history societies are another great resource for a researcher. My experience is that they vary greatly in how much/well they are able to help (and in how developed a society's website is), but sometimes you hit the jackpot.
As one example, in the Scottish Borders, the Borders Family History Societyhas been a great help to me. Among other things, they have a great series of web pages on the parishes in the Borders, with excellent detail. See, for example, the page on Cavers, a small parish in Roxburghshire where I had ancestors. They also maintain a discussion forum.
The church and burying ground at Cavers:
If you find a history/family history society that covers the area you are searching, the membership for a year (most seem to be in the $12 to $20 dollar range) is often a good deal, with a newsletter and access to volunteer help.
Place histories:
A quick browse through a decent genealogical or historical society library will show even a casual visitor that an amazing number of local histories have been written. Needless to say, some are better than others ;-) For the eastern US, many counties had a large, heavy history written in the late 19th century (and many of these have been reprinted sometime in the last few decades). Drawbacks: source citation standards not up to modern levels and original indexes are pretty close to non-existent (although it's not uncommon for a genealogical society to have done a more recent index, that may or may not be accessible except from a typed copied in one local library), plus in many cases the biographies are meant to flatter people so they would have bought a copy.... but there are often many clues to follow up on.
There are also the more modern photohistories done by Arcadia Publishing. Some examples:
Oxford Hills in Maine
Brewing in Milwaukee
San Francisco 1906 earthquake
As always, the quality varies ~ but worth seeing what there is for an area you are interested in.
For more sociological/cultural history, Philip Greven's Four Generations has excellent detail about the early settlers of Andover, Massachusetts (I bought my copy when i realized I was descended from four of the five couples whose marriages were listed on the first page of the Andover vital records). Albions's Seed by David Hackett Fischer has all sorts of details about various areas of English settlement in the original 13 colonies ~ worthwhile information like the fact that the average age at marriage in colonial New England was several years older for women than in the southern colonies. For example, evidently it was not that unusual for a woman in colonial Virginia to marry at 17 ~ but it was much less common in colonial Massachusetts, where 19 to 22 was more the cultural norm ~ and that difference can sometimes help untangle which woman with a common name was the bride.
Maps:
Maps ~ one area that has definitely changed with the development of the Internet. twenty years ago, it was difficult (and expensive) to get maps of Scotland in the US. Now, the National Library of Scotland has an amazing number of maps ~ some dating back to the 16th century! ~ at its website. The six inch and twenty five inch to the mile Ordnance Survey maps accessible from this search page have incredible detail ~ farm names, mill ponds, and so on.
Although I still like my hard copy reproduction maps of places I've done a fair bit of research in, ordered in the early days of the Internet, when ordering had become easy but maps hadn't yet been scanned and made so accessible.....
Photos:
The first thing to do is the most obvious ~ Google the place name and select the image search. Yup, that often works.... although, as of yesterday, when I did this for Shankendshiel, the isolated cottage my great-grandmother was born in, the second picture in the search results is one I took ;-)
But there are other resources for photos, as well. For the UK, Geograph is a tremendously helpful resource ~ searchable by Ordnance Survey (the UK's equivalent to the USGS) or place names, you can also drill down to where you are interested in on a map. Their stated goal:
We aim to collect, publish, organise and preserve representative images and associated information for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man.
Geograph has done quite in fulfilling that that goal ~ lots of photos to explore. If you had ancestors like some of mine, who lived in Victorian slums tenements in Edinburgh and Leith, there aren't pictures, as many of those buildings got replaced with 1950s/1960s council housing, but many other buildings are still visible.
How have you gotten to know where your ancestors lived?
What resources have you found that helped with the background knowledge that moved your genealogical research along?
What local gems ~ a genealogical society, a memories website, a local history book ~ have been a part of your learning about your family history?