About Abodery

What Abodery is

Every place has a story.

Abodery collects the histories of houses, farms, churches and main streets, one place at a time. We build them from public records and from the memories of people who knew the places.

We began in Waynesboro, Virginia, and in Shenandoah National Park. More places will follow.

Where the information comes from

These are the sources we use today.

• National Register of Historic Places nominations, prepared for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the National Park Service. We take building descriptions, dates, styles and historic names from them. Each page links to its nomination.
• Sanborn fire insurance maps from the Library of Congress. They show what stood on each lot in a given year, and we line them up with today’s map.
• USGS historical topographic maps and USGS lidar from the 3D Elevation Program. The old maps show how the land and roads looked in earlier decades. Lidar, combined with Virginia’s building footprints, gives us building heights.
• Virginia Geographic Information Network (VGIN). We use its address points to place houses on the map, and its Virginia Base Mapping Program aerial photos for views of a place over the years.
• OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors). Its street and intersection data helps us align the old maps to today’s.
• National Park Service, Shenandoah National Park, Historic Land Tracts. These are the 1920s land surveys behind our park tract pages, along with the case files that go with them.
• JMU Libraries, Histories along the Blue Ridge. Its scans of the Madison, Rappahannock and Rockingham county court land files are linked from the park tract they name, matched by county and tract number. Courtesy of the county Circuit Court Clerks and JMU Libraries; each file’s license is shown beside it.
• Blue Ridge Heritage Project, for memorial chimneys and history. Facts we draw from its site are written in our own words and link back to it.

Memories and photos

People who knew these places share their memories and photos with us. We keep everything they tell us, and they choose what the public sees: share it now, keep it for the record, or release it in a year they pick. Some sentences or photos can stay private while the rest is shown. Every memory is reviewed by an editor before it appears, and contributors can change their choice or delete what they shared at any time. Read the contributor terms, or share a memory of your own.

How we use AI

We use AI in a few ways, and we try to be clear about which is which.

• Computer models read the scanned nomination forms and old maps for us. They clean up the scanned text, pick out details such as styles, dates and names, and describe what each Sanborn map shows on a lot. These readings appear on pages without a person checking each one, so every page links to the original record and map, where you can see for yourself.
• Models draft the “Did you know?” facts. A person checks and approves each one before it is published.
• If you choose to be interviewed, the interviewer is an AI (Google Gemini). It drafts your memory from your answers. You review and edit the draft before you send it, and an editor reviews it again before it appears.
• Before a memory is sent, an AI reads it and marks sentences that seem best kept private, such as something about a living person’s health. It marks them rather than deleting them: you see every mark, and you decide what is shared. Contact details and recent sale prices are always kept private.
• Site search uses AI to find related places.

Nothing a model writes about a person’s memories, and no “Did you know?” fact, appears until a person has approved it. If something a model read from a record looks wrong, please tell us.

Privacy, in short

We show historic names from public records and the names contributors give us. We never publish contact details, or what a lived-in place has sold for in recent decades. The health, money or legal matters of living people stay private unless the contributor chooses otherwise. Inside Shenandoah National Park we don’t mark exact locations, to protect home sites and graves. Where a photo was taken is removed from it. Private detail may help us find connections between places. It is never quoted, and an editor checks every connection before it is published. The details are on our privacy page.

Corrections and contact

Found a mistake, or want something removed? Use “Suggest a correction or removal” on the place or memory, or email contact@abodery.com with the page address and what should change. People who share memories can edit their own.

Our records come from their sources, and those sources can contain errors. We would rather hear about them than repeat them.