(Please click on the titles below to expand sections) Maps and
images can provide an immense amount of historical information,
from property boundaries and place names to land ownership and
“improvements” such as houses, barns and fences. Settlement
patterns, roadways and other forms of communication and travel,
and the characteristic signs of evolving communities like
churches, schoolhouses and burying grounds are often recorded on
maps and captured in sketches and photographic images. While
Long Island was mapped by cartographers beginning in the early
17th century, Southampton was not formally surveyed until 1797
when each Town was ordered to do so by an act of the New York
State Legislature. Subsequent maps of great historical value to
present-day researchers include two U. S. Coast Surveys (1830s &
1850s), J. Chace Jr.’s Map of Suffolk County, L.I. (1858),
Beers’ Atlas of Long Island, New York (1873), and E. Belcher
Hyde’s Atlas of Long Island and Atlas of a Part of Suffolk
County (1902 & 1916). In the e