Family HistoryQUICK START

Create a Map of Places You've Visited

Personal History Updated

Ever seen a big map on someone’s wall with pins stuck in every place they’ve been? I bought one years ago and loved it. The only problem (besides needing to visit a lot more places) was that a pin can’t tell you when you were there, who went with you, or the story behind the trip. There just wasn’t room.

A digital map fixes that. With a free tool like Google My Maps you can drop a pin for every place you’ve lived or visited, add the dates and a few lines about each one, attach photos, and share the whole thing with your family. It’s a fun project, and it’s a genuinely useful piece of your personal history.

Places I’ve lived Vacations Work trips Road trip

(We’ve also written about using maps to show where your ancestors came from. This article is about mapping your own life.)

Make your map with Google My Maps

You’ll need a free Google account. Then:

  1. Open Google My Maps and choose Create a new map. Give it a title like “Places I’ve Lived and Traveled.”
  2. Set up layers. Rename the first layer “Places I’ve lived,” then use Add layer for “Vacations” and “Work trips.” Layers let you show or hide each group later.
  3. Add your places. Search for a town or address and click Add to map, or use the marker tool to drop a pin anywhere.
  4. Write a little about each one. Click a pin to edit it. A good title starts with the year, like “1998 – Honolulu, Hawaii.” In the description, note who was with you and one thing you remember.
  5. Add photos. Click the camera icon on a pin to attach a photo or video.
  6. Color-code it. Use the paint-bucket icon on each layer to give every group its own color and icon.
  7. Draw your road trips. Use the line tool to trace a route, or add driving directions between stops.
  8. Share it. Click Share to send a link to family. You can keep the map private, share it with only the people you choose, or let relatives add their own pins.
Tip

Make it a family project. Ask each person to add the places they’ve lived, in their own color. You’ll end up with a map of your whole family’s story, and probably a few surprises.

Other ways to map your life

  • Google Earth. The free web version lets you build a “project” that flies from place to place like a guided tour of your life. Great for a reunion or birthday slideshow.
  • The good old wall map. Pins still work! Number each pin and keep a matching list in a notebook or journal with the dates and stories.
  • A page in your personal history. Take a screenshot of your finished map and add it to your personal history along with the stories behind each pin.

Keep a copy

Online tools come and go, so save your work. In My Maps, open the menu next to the map’s title and choose Export to KML/KMZ. That file can be opened in Google Earth and many other mapping programs. Save it with the rest of your family history files, and print a copy for your journal.

Once you’ve mapped your own life, try mapping your parents’ or grandparents’ moves. Part 3 of our free course, Researching Records and Reconstructing Lives, shows how census records can tell you where they were every ten years.