Finding on the Ground: An Ontario Concession/Lot on a Map

You have finally figured out where your rural Ontario ancestor lived by finding the location in the census records (1851, 1861, 1871, 1901, or 1911) or through other means and have the township, concession, and lot details. Now you want to take a road trip and actually stand where they may have trod. 

So let's find that location on a map!

At the end of my previous post "Finding on the Ground - A Rural Route Address in Ontario" I skipped over the detailed process of how to do this. Now I'm going to walk you through the steps I took but using a different property than in that example.

The first step is to visit the Ontario "Topographic maps" site and click on the "Make a topographic map now" button. This will redirect you to the "Make a Topographic Map" page hosted by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. After a few moments a disclaimer will appear concerning the Ontario Parcel Licence Agreement. Read through it and at the bottom of the box click the "I Accept" button to continue (assuming you do agree to the license).

At the top of the page is a menu bar. Click on the word "Navigation" then the "Search" button (as highlighted below):

Screen capture of the menu bar with Navigation selected and the Search button highlighted from the Ontario "Make a Topographic Map" site.

A menu will appear asking how you want to Perform a Search. Since you have the Township, Concession, and Lot of the property you will want to select "Lot/Concession/Township" from the list:

Screen capture of the "Perform a Search" menu from the Ontario "Make a Topographic Map" site.

You are now prompted for the Township, Concession, and Lot details. Each of the items to be filled in need to be selected from the drop down item list. The Concession and Lot items change based on the Township and Concession selected.

Here is filled in the details for my 4th great-grandfather, Alexander Fraser, who resided in Drummond Township, on the 2nd Concession in lot 12 in the 1851 and 1816 censuses of Canada West.

Screen capture of the "Search by Twp/Lot/Concession" menu from the Ontario "Make a Topographic Map" site with details of Drummond Township, Concession 2, Lot 12 filled in.

Clicking on the Search button will bring you to the property on the map and highlight it in orange like you see below.

Screen capture of the search result returned by "Search by Twp/Lot/Concession" from the Ontario "Make a Topographic Map" site for Drummond Township, Concession 2, Lot 12.

You can zoom in and out of the map to see where the property is in relation to other places. In the bottom corner of the map beside the scale bar there is even a button to show an imagery map instead of the default topographic map.

Great, you have the location on the map. 

But what about getting directions to the place? 

For this I generally just right-click my mouse (I have a Windows computer, not too certain how a Mac or iPad user will do that) on the orange box near a road. This will being up a box with different actions. However, it also gives the latitude and longitude of where you right-clicked.

Screen capture of the search result returned by "Search by Twp/Lot/Concession" from the Ontario "Make a Topographic Map" site for Drummond Township, Concession 2, Lot 12 with the action box displayed.

We now have the location of Lat: 44.937° N and Lon: 76.194° W. You can even copy that text into your clipboard. Why do that? For the next step which is using Google Maps.

Open up Google Maps and in the Search Google Maps box put in the coordinates you got from the map on the Make a Topographic Map site.

Screen capture from Google Maps with the coordinates entered for 44.937° N 76.194° W.

Just a heads up, you have to remove the "Lat:" and "Lon:" words if you do a copy and paste of the coordinates for this to work.

If everything has worked properly then Google will bring you to the location on their map.

Screen capture from Google Maps for the coordinates 44.937° N 76.194° W and Satellite view selected.

With the location pinpointed you can ask Google for driving directions, save the location if you have logged in with your Google account, send to your phone, or even share with others via social media. If the Google Streetview car has driven past the place you can even see what the view looks like if you were standing on the road.

You might even make your own custom Google Map highlighting the various properties of nearby ancestors and other connected relatives.

Enjoy your road trip!