Murphy & Bolanz Home

Index

Search

Block Index

Book Index

Feedback

How To Use This Site

About This Site

Download the DjVu Browser Plug-in

Dallas Public Library Home Page

Texas/Dallas History & Archives Division Home Page

How To Use This Site

Technical requirements

While we attempted to make this site as simple, universal, and easy to use as possible, there are a few requirements. Viewing the image pages require using Netscape Navigator 4.5 (or later) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5 (or later). You will also need the DjVu Browser Plug-in 3.5, available for free from LizardTech.

Download the browser plug-in

Follow the link provided (to the left) to get to the download page for this plug-in. Once at the LizardTech site, select the appropriate version you want (they have plugins for Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, and Linux operating systems). Then click on the "download" button. After you download the file, you will need to close your browser and then run the executable DjVu file. The plug-in installs itself. Once it is installed, reopen your browser window, and you are ready to view our images.

Finding the right map

You can access the maps in three ways: the two indexes or a keyword search.

The index is a transcribed version of the Index Book used by Murphy & Bolanz as they created and used the bound maps. It is an alphabetical list of block and addition names, personal names, streets and towns. Select the appropriate letter and scroll through the list displayed. If the area/term you are looking for is included, click on the page number for that entry, and you will be taken to that page.

The Block Index was created as we processed the maps from the six block books. It references official city block numbers as mapped by Murphy & Bolanz. If you have the legal description for the area you are researching, this may eb a good place to start.

FreeFind provides the search feature. The terms that we included in the pages include streets, personal names and geographic and man-made features. FreeFind supports the following types of searches:

• Phrase Searching: use quotation marks ("") around the phrase.
• Boolean searches: use AND, OR, or NOT, which must be in all capital letters.
• "+" and "-" qualifiers: use the "+" sign for words that MUST appear in the results, and the "-" sign for words that MUST NOT appear on a page.
• Wildcards: use the "*" for words that have different endings (ex: rail* will pick up railroad, railroads, railway); use a "?" to replace a character within a word.

When searching by street names, you can differentiate between streets, roads, avenues, boulevards, drives, etc. This can be helpful when there are multiple streets with the same name. For example, there is a Mill Creek Place, Drive, Road and Circle in Dallas County. To search any of these separately, use the associated identifier in your search and search as a phrase. To find Mill Creek Place, you would enter "mill creek place" in the search box.

For personal names, you can search first and last name in any order without punctuation. In many instances, however, only the last name was known, so you may achieve better results searching by only the family name. The search is NOT case sensitive, so you do not need to capitalize personal names.

Geographic features, railroads, etc., are spelled out and best searched as phrases. Some examples include:

• "texas & pacific" for the T&P Railroad. You can include the term "railroad" in your search, but it is not necessary. Use the "&" symbol for your search, not the word "and".
• "turtle creek"
• "lagow estate"
• "railroad terminal"

Please contact us if you have any difficulties finding the map you need.

Using the Plug-in

LizardTech has provided a simple, yet thorough, guide to using the plug-in. Following this link will open a new window, so you only need to close the tutorial window to return to this page.

Most of the maps in this collection contain references to other book and page numbers. These references should be active links, and you can move your mouse pointer over the reference, click, and see the corresponding map. The new map will open in a new window, so you only need to close the window to return to the original map. If you come across a map reference that is not an active link, please let us know.