Virtual Jamestown website

Folks, this is just about the coolest thing I've seen lately. The Virtual Jamestown website has a ton of information, but a most interesting thing is where students at Salisbury State University used a technique to put the Indian towns on Google Earth.
This is from their site:

Indian Groups/Towns

The towns or Indian groups (usually having the same name) located on this map were taken from John Smith’s Map of Virginia. Smith created the map in 1608 from two voyages he took up and down the rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay.

Working under contract to Virtual Jamestown, geographer Mike Smith and students at Salisbury State University employed a “rubber sheet” technique to fit the towns onto a modern map of Virginia. During the 2007 fall semester, students in Crandall Shifflett’s undergraduate research history class at Virginia Tech collected data on 16 Indian groups or towns: Accomack, Accohannock, Arrohateck, Chesapeake, Nansemond, Kecoughtan, Kiskiack, Monacan, Mannahoac, Nottaway, Meherrin, Patawomeck, Powhatan, Rappahannock, Weanock, and Werowocomoco.

Towns were chosen primarily on the basis of the quantity of data available on Smith’s towns. Students used research data from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and secondary sources. In addition, courtesy of a special Google Earth (GE) Education Initiative (GE provided each student in the class with a license to Google Earth Pro), students could add their findings to the map. GE Pro allowed students to create pop-up windows of information on their assigned group according to a template with the following features: name, alternative names, meaning of name, geographical coordinates, distance from Werowocomoco, population with dates and sources, language group, link to report, and notes.

We have compiled them into a single kmz file (Google Earth file).

Continue here.

Penny Ferguson

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