Digital Marietta: Building a Local History GIS

Matthew Young, Marietta College

This session examines the conceptual framework and early results of the Digital Marietta project, a long-term effort to create a public historical GIS database of Marietta, Ohio, from its founding in 1788 through the 1940 census. Described by its founders as the first “organized” settlement in the Northwest Territory, Marietta’s place in American history helps to account for the significant number of large-scale maps of the community and data regarding its citizenry. By joining georeferenced maps with censuses, city directories, and other data, Digital Marietta will be a resource of interest to educators, researchers, as well as the general public. The presentation will have a dual focus, first showing insights on the community from the early 20th century, and then moving on to the underlying approach to GIS development and data collection. It is hoped that Digital Marietta can serve as a model for the development of other local historical databases.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 118. Project Development