Geography as evidence
The Family in Motion
Where a family stood is a documentary claim like any other. Each place below enters this archive only through a record that puts the family there.
Cartography
Historical basemap
A period-accurate county basemap has not yet been licensed and georeferenced. Rather than render a modern map that misstates 19th-century boundaries, this slot stays empty until the correct plat and county maps are secured.
Places of record
Documented locations
Copiah County
County · County Only precision
Entered as a research area for the Smith–Tolliver line. Individual associations to this place have not yet been documented in the archive.
Arkansas
State · State Only precision
Entered as a research area. No documented movement has been published to the archive.
Kentucky
State · State Only precision
Entered as a research area. No documented movement has been published to the archive.
Illinois
State · State Only precision
Entered as a research area. No documented movement has been published to the archive.
Lucky Hit plantation
Plantation · Unknown precision
Named in the 1865 Freedmen's Bureau register as the plantation associated with H. G. D. Brown. The precise location has not been independently established, so no coordinates are recorded.
Hazlehurst
Town · Approximate precision
Hazlehurst, Copiah County, Mississippi. Named as Laura's birthplace in a derivative Find a Grave memorial for her son George Smith; not yet corroborated by an original record inside BEFORE TILL.
Migration routes will be drawn only between places that a single document connects. Until then, no line is shown — see the methodology.