Tracing Paper

An inexpensive way to add a little fun to this brick wall demolition is with tracing paper.  The following shows the type available.

Transparent paper for sketches and overlays it states.  For me, tracing maps, and land surveys, and the like, would help get around some of those "geographic" brick walls.  The following are some examples.

The Ohio River Valley played an important role in the story of my family.  Early on [1650s], my family were on tidewaters of Virginia.  In the early period of American history [starting 1776] my family migrated to this valley.  The figure above used tracing paper to roughly outline this "Ohio Valley" and the major geographic obstacles that came into play.  "Go west young man"...but how?

Understanding migration patterns helped break down a couple of my brick walls.  The 1850 census records in Kentucky [where my family has lived since 1776] would give a state of birth such as PA, VA, NC, etc.   How they got here was often a question that had to be answered before that brick wall could be faced.   Lots of color, lots of tracing, came into play.  Tracing paper was the foundation of these adventures.