Orange County, North Carolina · Est. 1752
Cartographic tools & historical research for the landscapes that shaped us
— Portfolio of Works —
GIS Field Research Tool
Using LiDAR terrain analysis and geodesic viewshed modeling to locate forgotten enslaved burial grounds in Orange County — a phone-based field tool for cemetery prospecting in the plantation landscape.
Web Mapping Application
An interactive LiDAR hillshade mapping tool for historical field research — land grants, cemeteries, geomorphons, and the hidden landscape of Orange County.
Historical Web Map
Winner of the 2025 UNC GIS Day Map Contest. A geographic history of residential segregation, environmental racism, and Jim Crow in Chapel Hill, NC.
Historical Web Map
Over 8,000 colonial and early federal land grant polygons reconstructed from original survey records — the cadastral fabric of Orange County from its founding in 1752.
Historical Web Map · Deed Research
The Kirkland family's historic homeplace in Hillsborough, mapped through its original deed chain — with biography pages documenting the enslaved people, free people of color, and white families whose lives intersected on this landscape.
Georeferencing Tool
A browser-based tool for georeferencing historical maps — align scanned plats and survey maps to modern coordinates using control points and affine transformation.
Historical Web Map · Hydrology
All named rivers, creeks, and branches within Orange County's original boundaries (as it was in 1752) — reconstructed from colonial surveys, old maps, and occasionally personal interviews.
Field Documentation Tool
A browser-based map displaying features collected from geotagged photos taken in the field — linking images to place.
In Development
New cartographic and historical research projects are in progress — including spatial analysis of Free People of Color communities, historical deed mapping, and PhD research on the spatial organization of slavery.
Register of Deeds for Orange County, North Carolina (through December 2026), and doctoral student in Geography at UNC Chapel Hill (starting August 2026). For thirty years I have been reconstructing the cadastral landscape of this corner of the Piedmont — tracing land grants and deeds, trying to connect freedom papers, sales & other legal records of enslaved people, and indigenous geographies through the language of metes and bounds. These maps are an attempt to make that history visible.