SEE WHAT YOU CAN FIND IN THE SANBORN FIRE INSURANCE MAPS

SEE WHAT YOU CAN FIND IN THE SANBORN FIRE INSURANCE MAPS

 

“I just purchased a home in Easton and want to know more about it.”

 

            It’s a frequent question we hear in the Marx Room. One of the first resources we reach for are the collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Library has a paper set of 42 maps of the Easton area for the year 1919 and microfilms with the years 1885 to 1927 and 1950 to 1970.

            First a few words about the history of this valuable resource. Surveyor Daniel Alfred Sanborn founded the Sanborn Map Company in 1867 in New York City. The maps were originally designed to be used by insurance companies to estimate the risks involved in underwriting policies in the rapidly growing urbanized areas of the United States. Mr. Sanborn’s maps were highly detailed and rich in the useful information the insurance companies required.

            The colorful Sanborn maps show addresses, building footprints, building use, property boundaries, materials used in construction, height/number of stories, street names, road widths, right of ways and fire-fighting resources at the time the map was made. The sets have an index and an overall map of the area represented along with a key to interpret the symbols and colors used.

            You can see if your house originally had a wraparound porch or a chicken coop or bake oven in the back yard. Early buildings did not have indoor plumbing, so there was probably an outhouse in the back yard. (A nod to all of the bottle diggers out there!) Maybe your home was built as a log cabin or out of stone and subsequently covered over with a different material. There is an abundance of information about the construction of the buildings which is helpful to those who would like to restore their homes to an earlier appearance.

            Businesses, large and small are also shown on the maps. Your home may have been a small grocery store, a barber shop, a church rectory. By comparing different years of the map sets you can

see if the landscape has been altered over time and view the expansion of homes and new streets as
they occurred in your neighborhood. The maps show parks, churches, graveyards, bodies of water
and rail lines.

            The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps bring the past to brilliant life and are a treasure trove for historians, preservationists, genealogists, archaeologists and, of course, the new homeowner.