https://historygeo.com/ There is a surname function.
There are many tourist maps on the Internet today and various sources for old maps including National and local archives. But I thought I'd give his database a try while at a genealogy library.
Maps made about the time they lived in a city, town, village, hamlet are the best.
I love to take genealogy writing a bit further, to include some understanding of where our ancestors lived, which is a whole lot about how they lived.
The Landowners Project is ongoing and to be honest, the area I was interested in was not (yet) included.
We can see if our ancestors lived near a river, a school, a cemetery, a church, or a factory - maybe where they worked. We can see if they lived in a single family home (house) or a townhouse or rowhouse, or perhaps a hotel. (The name of the school, cemetery, church or factory can link you to school, cemetery, church, or employment records.)
We can link census with address with a map. We can use landowner maps to also seek out deeds and inheritances, land grants, squatters rights.
Sometimes we can link the old map with the new, or an address with a Google Street View or Google Earth.
I used the HISTORICAL MAPS for an area I grew up in. I looked at 1850, 1862, 1890, and 1898. All in the distant past, long before I grew up there. But I could see the names of the landowners had become the names of the streets and roads. It was interesting when a property was listed as "so and so's heirs" and when the creek showed up with an actual name. Also listed were stores, parsonages, and then where the railroad came through...
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