By Grace Hannah Buck

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jackie Gallagher

Abstract

The field of historic preservation makes use of many types of archival resources to understand past events, practices, and spaces that would otherwise be difficult to parse from extant objects. Though they can be used in their initial state, application of geospatial methods to certain archival resources can improve their ease of use, reveal missing context, or provide new insight to the information they hold. In that vein, this study applies geospatial analysis to a collection of historic insurance policies issued by the Mutual Assurance Society (MAS) of Virginia (1796-1867) for buildings in Fredericksburg, VA, at the turn of the 19th Century. Newly adapted into a geospatial database via georectification of their drawn maps, these policies hold information regarding buildings’ ownership, physical qualities, and economic value, among other categories. Through the Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot statistic and visual analysis, this study characterizes spatial trends of building materials, size, use, and value in Fredericksburg in the years of 1796 through 1801. This time period represents the first six years of MAS policy issue in the city and provides a baseline of local building trends for comparison to later time periods exhibiting substantial differences.