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Thursday, October 22, 2009

ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS IN 1692

I've found the online version of one of the maps in Elinor Abbot's book
about Andover. It's part of the University of Virginia's website on the
Salem Witch trials, but it's very useful to anyone tracing family who lived in
Andover at that period. I recommend using the frame version and then
enlarging it to the large size. You can zoom in one click on the map and
see the names on the map and consult the list in the left hand frame for the
names of which family members lived in which houses.

Although this map shows Andover in 1692, nearly fifty years after the founding
of the town, it illustrates Ms. Abbot's point of how the town spread out from
it's center. It also shows how some of my ancestors who came from the same
part of England(mainly the southwestern area of England) settled to the south
end of town while my other ancestor Richard Barker, who came from elsewhere
in England, settled to the north. In fact if you look on the map across Merrimack
River from the Shawshin Fields, you see the house of Robert Swan in the town of
Haverhill. Eventually my ancestor Jonathan Barker would marry Nancy Swan.

Check out some of the other links from the main page of the website for images of
documents from the witchtrials!

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