[Qgis-user] Genealogy Related

[Houston, Dion A Sr CPT MIL USA TRADOC]

Hi all,

I apologize if this is a GIS 101 kind of question.  I am slightly above neophyte when it comes to GIS.

I am trying to track down where some ancestors of mine lived.  I recently acquired JPG’s of old township maps showing my relatives from the early-mid 1800’s.  Of course these JPG’s aren’t geo-rectified, each township is in a separate file, and they’re not necessarily north facing.  The also have limited features I can identify on modern maps, specifically I was attempting to use hydrology, but there are now several reservoirs in the area so much of the hydrology has changed.

What I hope to do is to merge several township maps together basically like a jigsaw puzzle and use churches to georectify.  I downloaded QGIS hoping it would be easy to do so, but it seems like raster layers are tied together by coordinate system, so it puts the upper left corners of my township maps together and doesn’t allow me to move them.

If someone can tell me what tool(s) will do what I want, and/or how to do it in QGIS I’d appreciate it.  I am (as of this week) running a Mac with Windows and Kubuntu running virtually so (practically) any operating system will work.  I am currently using GeoRect from FalconView to georectify, but I noticed QGIS has that capability as well so I may try that.  My preference is to use free or cheap software, as I can’t justify spending hundreds of dollars on Photoshop just to find some old ancestors :)

Thanks in advance,

Dion
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