GIS

Despite repeatedly (and miserably) failing at QGIS in class this past week, I still appreciate and understand the value and potential of this system of digital visualization. Funny enough week 4’s readings have matched up with the broader historiographical and methodological themes that I’ve been studying in my other two classes this semester.

In my Study and Writing of History course, we read Peter Novick’s (“The Death of) the Ethics of Historical Practice (and Why I Am Not in Mourning)” and Dr. Schrag’s The Princeton Guide to Historical Research, which discuss how historians continuously develop new ways to look at the past, therefore continuing the chain of historical interpretations and reinterpretations (Novick 28-42; Schrag 1-399). EVERY article we read for this week in Clio Wired not only echoed Novick and Schrag’s points, but also demonstrated how GIS is a part of this cycle of interpretation as GIS can present new data to help historians create new analyses about the past. GIS brings together the digital and visual worlds to make a creative tool of historical interpretation (Gregory and Ell 1-19, 89-118; Siebert 537-574; Salvoldi 1-12; Grunewald 1-3; Novick 28-42; Schrag 1-399).

As seen in Salvoldi, GIS can recreate lost information about past cultures, like reconstructing the sites of ancient Nubia, now destroyed due to the Nile River dam projects (1-12). As seen in Grunewald’s “Beyond the Archives” GIS revealed new information about Russian POW camps showcasing that these camps were set up near economic hubs in order to put German POWs to work rebuilding Russia’s post-war economy (1-3). Knowles’s Gettysburg GIS recreation revealed new information about the Confederacy’s lack of sight on the battlefield which impacted their military performance (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/A-Cutting-Edge-Second-Look-at-the-Battle-of-Gettysburg-1-180947921/?no-ist=).

Additionally, the book I discussed just this week, The Sewing Girl’s Tale, in Dr. Zagarri’s Development of the Early Republic class demonstrated how GIS could be used to reconstruct the space in late-eighteenth century New York City where the book’s characters lived. I found this addition incredibly helpful in reconstructing these past lives and events (Sweet xi-286).

This topic crossover between three of my classes got me thinking about how I would use GIS in my own work (while also making me feel like a smart grad student connecting all the dots ). Although I am just in the beginning of my career in history, so far, I seem to be really drawn to family histories with material culture and public history components to them. (You’re probably thinking, yes Ally, we KNOW!!)

Looking at the context of the Myers family, who were the first Jewish family to settle in late eighteenth-century Norfolk, VA, GIS could be used to reconstruct their extensive social network. Within the surviving letters of this family, most of them pertain to business transactions with predominately other Jewish merchant families. There was a whole network of Jewish mercantile families across the eastern seaboard as well as throughout the Atlantic world. How could GIS be used to track these networks? What could I infer from seeing these networks visualized? How would the Myerses have moved through their city of Norfolk? What do these movements tell us about their daily lives? Did each individual in the family move throughout the city differently and if so, why? What more could GIS tell me about Norfolk as a whole? I have had a hard time locating early maps of Norfolk and would love to be able to see what the city was like in 1795.

Too often with cases like the Myers family, we see the erasure of early American enslaved persons. The grandeur of the Myers’s house was maintained by their enslaved persons who lived and worked within this three-story townhouse. How could GIS be used to reconstruct their lives, movements, and communities within the context of Norfolk’s slave-society during the early republic? Through the work of Drs. Oberle and Manuel-Scott at The Center for Mason Legacies, spatial history is used to reintegrate the lives of the enslaved into the space of Gunston Hall (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14664658.2025.2445385).

With this methodology in mind, where in the Myers house would have the enslaved been most present? Would they have been standing in the Myerses’ dining room or parlor ready at a moment’s notice? Would they have been packed into the all-brick kitchen during a hot and humid Norfolk summer day?

Switching gears to Gunston Hall, the quarters of the enslaved were not preserved and today you can visit the reconstructed versions of these sites put in place by the Colonial Dames, who manage the property. Dr. Otis made the point of how GIS can be used in conjunction with VR to literally fabricate past spaces that no longer survive. How could GIS and VR be used to kick things up a notch and resurrect the history of the enslaved persons’ lives and community or as they called it their “Logtown”? With the help of GIS, I can generate new questions just like these and start to develop more complex and different insightful analyses about the enslaved, the Myerses’ and the Masons’ lived experiences. As I stated in my first blog post, the limit the does not exist when it comes to digital history as we can use it to expand upon what we know and don’t know (Gregory and Ell 1-19, 89-118; Siebert 537-574; Salvoldi 1-12; Grunewald 1-3; Novick 28-42; Schrag 1-399).