New York City in 1609

St. Paul's, Manhattan, 1766

Do you have family connections to the Big Apple? I don't have many and those I do have are to Long Island, not Manhattan. My grandma's younger brother, Carl Nordstrom, was born in Brooklyn in 1920 and the family stayed there for a few years before returning to Bethlehem, PA. On my mamaw's side, if Settlers by the Long Grey Trail is to be believed, the Harrison family settled in Oyster Bay, Long Island before migrating down the Valley of Virginia to Rockingham County, VA.

The New York known by the Nordstroms in the 1920s and the Harrisons in the 1680s were vastly different places. If you were to visit New York today, you can probably see snippets of the early twentieth century, but the seventeenth century has completely vanished. Unless, of course you know how and where to look.

The September 2009 issue of National Geographic had a feature entitled "Before New York: Rediscovering the Wilderness of 1609." There are also photos and an interactive map available online. The article highlights the work of Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Mannahatta Project. Essentially, Sanderson took a 1782 British military map of New York and matched it up to a modern map and was able to identified the location of long lost natural features. Then he and his colleagues re-created the network of creatures and habitats that likely existed on Manhattan.

In 2010, WCS moved beyond the Mannahatta project to the Welikia Project, a Lenape word meaning "my good home." This new project seeks to do for all of New York City including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens that it previously did for Manhattan. Though the website is more interested in ecology than settlement, it does provide a way to explore New York in way that can not be done today.

I found the map a little tricky to navigate, but that may have more to do with my computer than their website. You can only view information about Manhattan without making a donation to the project. There are also lesson plans that can be downloaded for free to use in the classroom.