Frequently Asked Questions
How do you choose your boundaries?
The boundaries of the Irish Channel are fluid and contentious. The term Irish Channel didn’t even appear in print until after the Civil War, closer to the turn of the century. For the purposes of this map, we decided to go with the city’s historic district boundaries (find more about their criteria here).
We constantly considered expanding our western edge past Jackson Ave, to match up with other scholars’ boundaries. This is likely to be phase two of our project, so keep checking back for updates if you are interested!
How can I search the map?
If you go to the interactive map and click on the button at the top right (it looks like a square and is to the right of the sharing button), it will bring you to the full map in a separate window. There you can search the map!
I can’t find my house, where is it?
Unfortunately, sometimes our sources don’t tell us all we want to know. There are entire streets which are in our area, and we think we might have found on the census…without an address. For us as historians it is important to be as accurate as possible, which means that if the address on the map lacked a corresponding census entry (or vise versa) we could not in good conscience include that entry.
I found my ancestors in the Channel! Can you tell me more about them?
For individual queries, feel free to email us through our Contact Us section.
And of course if you have any other questions, please feel free to fill out a query in the Contact Us section of our About page!