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.
Chicot County, Arkansas
County · County Only precision
County named in family research as the destination of enslaved people associated with the 1855 Taliaferro estate division. No entered record yet places Hilliard there.
Union County, Kentucky
County · County Only precision
County of residence recorded for Hilliard and Bettie in the 1880 U.S. Census (Rose Hill).
Spencers Mill
Town · Approximate precision
Locality recorded in 1880s tax entries for Hilliard Tolliver / Talliaferro.
Blue Island, Illinois
City · Approximate precision
Named in a derivative cemetery listing as the burial place of a George Smith (Lincoln Cemetery). Entered as a research location, not as a documented family place.
Chicago, Illinois
City · Approximate precision
Named in published accounts as the city where the Carthan household lived. Entered as a research location pending records examined by this archive.
Migration routes will be drawn only between places that a single document connects. Until then, no line is shown — see the methodology.