This week we played with mapping through Google Maps. I was able to place Marvin’s birthplace, childhood home, and the farm he owned after the war. They are all within a dozen miles of each other. So the war was clearly his only significant venture outside of his immediate world. I think this, in an of itself, is an interesting fact. I definitely still want to do more research on Michigan farms. I think it would be nice to put the map I created and attach maybe some photos or writings about typical Michigan farms, I have lists of some of the livestock etc they had on the farm so I should be able to come up with a pretty good description of farm life, as it would have been on Bolton’s farm.
In addition to that, I need to make a thorough map of his military years, especially as that was his only real foray outside Michigan. I have created one with all the places I definitely know he was–places where he enlisted, mustered, was wounded, etc. But I need to complete my tracking of his unit’s movement to flesh out that picture a bit.
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