Original Maps
The "snapshots" collected here pair an insight or a question (sometimes both) with a map (or two). They occasionally address matters of idle curiosity but often point to the significance of map design and the challenges of mapping historical data.
Wrinkles in village geography
Vil'brekht's map is the best cartographic source I have found for the early post-annexation years. It is quite unique in its almost single-minded devotion to mapping villages, and I took the opportunity to digitize every point on the map, along with…
The expanding geography of settler dachas
This pair of maps shows the locations of dachas granted to settlers as reported in 1794, and as reported in 1802. Only the properties whose locations I could establish with confidence are shown.