Creating your own Google Map using the Mapalist utility

Earlier this year Jill Ball wrote about where our forebears come from.  She included a map of where her forebears came from.

An excellent utility for preparing Google maps highlighting specific places is Mapalist.

I have written about Mapalist previously on my own blog (Mapping the birthplaces of the children of John Way and Sarah née Daw).

First you create a spreadsheet in Google Drive. You enter the place names you want and the utility uses those names to mark the places on a Google map.

It was very quick to enter the data and generate a map. I used a separate column to enter the Australian state to ensure correct disambiguation of the place names.

Birthplaces of children of John Way and Sarah Daw	State
Adelaide	South Australia
Binalong	New south wales
Collingwood	Victoria
Murrumburrah	New South Wales
Grenfell	New South Wales
Parkes	New South Wales

You then go to https://mapalist.com. You do need to register for an account if you haven't already got one. You will need to allow Mapalist access to your Google account details.

Go to the tab Maps then choose create. Choose the source type of Google spreadsheet. Choose the worksheet you entered the data into.

Creating a map in Mapalist

You get a preview of the data being used.
After clicking next you assign fields to the columns. It did this automatically - I didn't need to change anything.

stage 2 of creating your map using Mapalist

I used a separate column to enter the Australian state to ensure correct disambiguation of the place names.

I clicked apply and then next. 

stage 3 of creating your map using Mapalist

In my case it had no problem in working out the places I meant.  If you have trouble then you might need to tweak your spreadsheet with extra fields to help locate the place you are meaning.

At the next stage you configure your map by choosing the pin you want.

stage 4 of creating a map using Mapalist

You can play around with the settings and preview your map

options in stage 4

Finally you save your map, having configured it as to whether you want it private or public ...

stage 5 save your map

You can preview

Immediately below the map are some buttons to click. The second one, a rectangle with an arrow emerging from it, is for sharing by email but clicking that also gives you the code to embed your map on any web page including your blog.

Et voila!

Good luck with mapping your family history.