Sarah M Otterstrom
Biographic Data
| ID | 172171 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah M Otterstrom |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah M |
| FAMILY NAME | Otterstrom |
| SIGNATURE | OTTERSTROM S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brigham Young University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6871-2384 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Large-Scale Genealogies Distinguish Frontier from Steady-State Internal Migration
Many studies of human migration focus on modern issues such as economics, politics, urbanization, and commuting. Here, we seek foundational patterns by using very large genealogies to measure migration centuries before modern technologies or census data became available. In Europe and North America from 1400 to 1950 we find two distinct patterns of internal lifetime migration: in most locations and eras we find “steady-state” migration with a pow…
Imported Toponymy and the FamilySearch Place Name Database: Mapping North American Communities with European Capital Namesakes
Place names lend themselves very easily to cartographic and geographic research, and they have been studied extensively from these perspectives. Recent technological advances have allowed for a more rapid geographical study of toponyms of many types. An additional, albeit less visible resource with a robust place name system is the FamilySearch genealogical database. FamilySearch is the world leader in open-source genealogical data and hosts a us…
Analyzing Multi-Generational Gathering and Dispersion to and from Ten 19th-Century American Cities
Genealogy, with its tying of people to places, allows for the study of migration over multiple generations. In this paper we use family history data from FamilySearch.org to analyze the migration of the ancestors of those born between 1865 and 1875 in ten United States cities followed by the migration of descendants of people born in the same city during that same decade. Other work has followed the ancestors for multiple generations, and we have…
New West and Old West in the Twenty-First Century: The Rich Get Richer
The rural U.S. West is increasingly valued for its unique natural beauty, tourism potential, and the outdoor recreational activities it provides rather than for its grazing potential, lumber mills, or extraction of valuable minerals. With this transition in mind, we examine demographic changes in the region within the context of selective migration. We build on research conducted in the late 1990s that studied the changing spatial patterns of mig…
Using Linked Census Records to Study Shrinking Cities in the United States from 1900 to 1940
We develop a data-driven method for linking people in cities over time that can be used in any country that has data tracking the locations of individuals across multiple periods. We apply this process to United States Census data from 1900 through 1940 and find that, of the 1,000 largest cities in 1900, 15 percent experienced a decline in population by 1940. We also use the large data set for this same time period, linking more than 45 million p…
Relative Concentrations and Diffusion of Covid-19 across the United States in 2020
Les auteurs étudient la propagation de la COVID-19 (maladie à coronavirus 2019) en termes de cas et de décès dans l’ensemble des États-Unis, à l’aide des données relatives aux comtés à différents niveaux de comparaison. Ils utilisent l’indice de Hoover et l’indice de différentiel géographique pour analyser l’évolution de la concentration de COVID-19 à l’échelle des grandes zones économiques ( city systems), de mai 2020 à décembre 2020. Les auteur…
Development of the Genealogical FamilySearch Database and Expanding Its Use to Map and Measure Multiple Generations of American Migration
Genealogical research is full of opportunities for connecting generations. Millions of people pursue that purpose as they put together family trees that span hundreds of years. These data are valuable in linking people to the people of their past and in developing personal identities, and they can also be used in other ways. The purposes of this paper are to first give a short history of the development and practice of family history and genealog…
Comparative Nicaraguan Migrant and Non-Migrant Experiences in the Early Twenty-First Century
This paper examines the circumstances in which Nicaraguan migrants to Costa Rica found themselves and the situations of families in Nicaragua who had household members who had moved to Costa Rica from the late 1990s to 2012. Through surveys and interviews conducted in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, this paper peers into the immigrant experience of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica and explores such issues as does time in Costa Rica improve the immigrant …
Historical markers in the western United States: Regional and cultural contrasts
The American West evokes many images in the minds of both its citizens and visitors. Historical markers are one way that regional historical identity has been preserved and displayed over time. Tourists interested in exploring the heritage of local areas can thus find a wealth of valuable site-specific information in these markers. Western states have 1000s of these official landmarks, which commemorate an event, a town, an old building, importan…
The Uneven Landscape of California's Historical Landmarks
Historical markers help preserve and display history and communicate what a group deems important about a place's past. This paper analyzes the changing themes and landscape relevance of California's official historical landmarks. California's thousand‐plus markers are classified and mapped by themes, analyzed for changing topical emphasis over time, and evaluated for landscape presence. The thematic distribution and relative density of these lan…
Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands
Journal Article Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Get access Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 302. $29.95. Samuel M. Otterstrom Samuel M. Otterstrom Brigham Young University [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 120, …
Environmental Hazards as Disamenities: Selective Migration and Income Change in the United States from 2000–2010
An emerging area of migration research is the complex relationship between migration and environmental hazards, broadly defined. Environmental hazards are best viewed through a vulnerability lens, which has two components. The first is exposure - the frequency and duration of the hazardous events-and the second is adaptive capacity - the ability of communities to mitigate, deflect, or absorb the effects of exposure. Because migration is selective…
Genealogy, Migration, and the Intertwined Geographies of Personal Pasts
Genealogical data have tremendous potential to reveal the geographic web of past family connections. In this article we propose a genealogical geography paradigm that utilizes queries of a database containing more than 800 million names to analyze historical migration patterns. Our conceptual model considers hourglass-shaped community ancestry and descendancy hinterlands that spread out from a local place and incorporates the ideas of diaspora, g…
US regional income change and migration: 1995–2004
One of the most important concepts found in the migration literature is that it is a selective process, both in terms of who migrates and in the migrants' individual movement trajectories. The selectivity of migration means that the population structure at both origin and destination will change over time through migration, thus influencing the socio‐economic fabric of both sending and receiving regions. In this study we are primarily interested …
From Wilderness to Megalopolis: A Comparative Analysis of County Level Sex Ratios in the United States From 1790 to 1910 Using a Historical GIS
Using a historical Geographic Information System (GIS) and statistical measures, this research examines the sex ratios of the United States between 1790 and 1910 to determine whether men truly outnumbered women on the American Frontier. We used United States Census data combined with historical digital county maps to calculate male-to-female sex ratios by county and settlement density class. We analyzed these ratios using descriptive statistics, …
Divergent growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints in the United States, 1990–2004: Diaspora, gathering, and the East–West divide
This paper analyses the spatially divergent growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints from 1990 to 2004 in the US. The Church has been based in Utah since 1847, and its membership continues to be concentrated in the West. However, recent population trends show an ongoing diaspora throughout the country marked by local and regional clusters (or ‘gatherings’) where more rapid growth and larger relative membership sizes are evident. …
Income Migration and the Spatial Redistribution of Poverty and Income in the Mountain West Region during the 1990s
The purpose of this research is to understand how rapid population growth in the Mountain West region in the U.S. during the 1990s has affected the spatial distribution of income and poverty. Population growth in the Mountain West during the 1990s was principally through the mechanism of internal and international migration. In previous research we found that much of this growth, and the income growth that went along with it, was highly concentra…
Deserts and oases: The continuing concentration of population in the American Mountain West
Population concentration in United States city‐systems from 1790 to 2000: Historical trends and current phases
Among the industrialised nations of the world, the USA has a relatively short history of urbanisation. This fact and the ready availability of reliable historical data have made the USA a fertile place for studying the nature of urban and regional growth from its earliest beginnings. This paper analyses the patterns of city and hinterland, or city‐system, population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 2000. The Hoover index is employe…
Family transitions in Latin America: First intercourse, first union and first birth
This paper examines the initiation of sexual activity, first marriage and first birth as key steps in family formation. These events mark the transition to adulthood and generally occur in the late teens and early twenties in most Latin American countries. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine the timing of these events across birth cohorts, comparing urban and rural areas, countries, cultural regions and educational groups. …
The Settlement of the United States from 1790 to 1990: Divergent Rates of Growth and the End of the Frontier
The timing of the American frontier's closing can be determined through an analysis of the patterns and rates of settlement growth in the United States-based on historical county boundaries, population data from U.S. censuses, and a minimum of two people per square mile to classify a region as settled. Trends in the settlement of the contiguous areas of the country indicate three periods of population settlement-1790 to 1840, 1840 to 1910, and 19…
Spatial Patterns of Migration and Income Change in the Mountain West: The Dominance of Service-Based, Amenity-Rich Counties
One of the most recognizable and important changes occurring in the West is rapid population growth. This article intends to address questions associated with whether patterns of population growth and income migration are associated with “new” and “old” West economies. Rural restructuring in the U.S. has created a group of counties with service-based economies. In the Mountain West, a number of counties with service-based economies are located in…
Trends in national and regional population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 1990: From the frontier to the urban transformation
The United States has undergone sizable changes in its population geography since 1790. A major component of these population shifts has been the rapid movement of the frontier westward as settled area increased. This research shows the population deconcentration effects of the great migration from relatively high densities along the eastern seaboard to the sparsely populated west. This dispersal was followed by concentration stemming from massiv…
Variation In Coping With EI Niño Droughts In Northern Costa Rica
In a small country like Costa Rica, the same climate event can affect neighboring communities in very distinct ways. In the summer of 1998, following an intense El Niño-related drought, I set out to examine how this event had affected small-scale farmers across northern Costa Rica. Surprisingly, there were large differences in coping abilities between farmers of the Caribbean and Pacific regions despite the overall small spatial scale at which my…
Ethnic and economic regions in Slovakia: A statistical and visual exploration of contemporary patterns
Family transitions in Latin America: First intercourse, first union and first birth
This paper examines the initiation of sexual activity, first marriage and first birth as key steps in family formation. These events mark the transition to adulthood and generally occur in the late teens and early twenties in most Latin American countries. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine the timing of these events across birth cohorts, comparing urban and rural areas, countries, cultural regions and educational groups. …
Deserts and oases: The continuing concentration of population in the American Mountain West
Environmental Hazards as Disamenities: Selective Migration and Income Change in the United States from 2000–2010
An emerging area of migration research is the complex relationship between migration and environmental hazards, broadly defined. Environmental hazards are best viewed through a vulnerability lens, which has two components. The first is exposure - the frequency and duration of the hazardous events-and the second is adaptive capacity - the ability of communities to mitigate, deflect, or absorb the effects of exposure. Because migration is selective…
Trends in national and regional population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 1990: From the frontier to the urban transformation
The United States has undergone sizable changes in its population geography since 1790. A major component of these population shifts has been the rapid movement of the frontier westward as settled area increased. This research shows the population deconcentration effects of the great migration from relatively high densities along the eastern seaboard to the sparsely populated west. This dispersal was followed by concentration stemming from massiv…
Genealogy, Migration, and the Intertwined Geographies of Personal Pasts
Genealogical data have tremendous potential to reveal the geographic web of past family connections. In this article we propose a genealogical geography paradigm that utilizes queries of a database containing more than 800 million names to analyze historical migration patterns. Our conceptual model considers hourglass-shaped community ancestry and descendancy hinterlands that spread out from a local place and incorporates the ideas of diaspora, g…
Development of the Genealogical FamilySearch Database and Expanding Its Use to Map and Measure Multiple Generations of American Migration
Genealogical research is full of opportunities for connecting generations. Millions of people pursue that purpose as they put together family trees that span hundreds of years. These data are valuable in linking people to the people of their past and in developing personal identities, and they can also be used in other ways. The purposes of this paper are to first give a short history of the development and practice of family history and genealog…
Comparative Nicaraguan Migrant and Non-Migrant Experiences in the Early Twenty-First Century
This paper examines the circumstances in which Nicaraguan migrants to Costa Rica found themselves and the situations of families in Nicaragua who had household members who had moved to Costa Rica from the late 1990s to 2012. Through surveys and interviews conducted in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, this paper peers into the immigrant experience of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica and explores such issues as does time in Costa Rica improve the immigrant …
Historical markers in the western United States: Regional and cultural contrasts
The American West evokes many images in the minds of both its citizens and visitors. Historical markers are one way that regional historical identity has been preserved and displayed over time. Tourists interested in exploring the heritage of local areas can thus find a wealth of valuable site-specific information in these markers. Western states have 1000s of these official landmarks, which commemorate an event, a town, an old building, importan…
The Settlement of the United States from 1790 to 1990: Divergent Rates of Growth and the End of the Frontier
The timing of the American frontier's closing can be determined through an analysis of the patterns and rates of settlement growth in the United States-based on historical county boundaries, population data from U.S. censuses, and a minimum of two people per square mile to classify a region as settled. Trends in the settlement of the contiguous areas of the country indicate three periods of population settlement-1790 to 1840, 1840 to 1910, and 19…
The Uneven Landscape of California's Historical Landmarks
Historical markers help preserve and display history and communicate what a group deems important about a place's past. This paper analyzes the changing themes and landscape relevance of California's official historical landmarks. California's thousand‐plus markers are classified and mapped by themes, analyzed for changing topical emphasis over time, and evaluated for landscape presence. The thematic distribution and relative density of these lan…
US regional income change and migration: 1995–2004
One of the most important concepts found in the migration literature is that it is a selective process, both in terms of who migrates and in the migrants' individual movement trajectories. The selectivity of migration means that the population structure at both origin and destination will change over time through migration, thus influencing the socio‐economic fabric of both sending and receiving regions. In this study we are primarily interested …
Population concentration in United States city‐systems from 1790 to 2000: Historical trends and current phases
Among the industrialised nations of the world, the USA has a relatively short history of urbanisation. This fact and the ready availability of reliable historical data have made the USA a fertile place for studying the nature of urban and regional growth from its earliest beginnings. This paper analyses the patterns of city and hinterland, or city‐system, population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 2000. The Hoover index is employe…
Variation In Coping With EI Niño Droughts In Northern Costa Rica
In a small country like Costa Rica, the same climate event can affect neighboring communities in very distinct ways. In the summer of 1998, following an intense El Niño-related drought, I set out to examine how this event had affected small-scale farmers across northern Costa Rica. Surprisingly, there were large differences in coping abilities between farmers of the Caribbean and Pacific regions despite the overall small spatial scale at which my…
Ethnic and economic regions in Slovakia: A statistical and visual exploration of contemporary patterns
Spatial Patterns of Migration and Income Change in the Mountain West: The Dominance of Service-Based, Amenity-Rich Counties
One of the most recognizable and important changes occurring in the West is rapid population growth. This article intends to address questions associated with whether patterns of population growth and income migration are associated with “new” and “old” West economies. Rural restructuring in the U.S. has created a group of counties with service-based economies. In the Mountain West, a number of counties with service-based economies are located in…
Trends in national and regional population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 1990: From the frontier to the urban transformation
The United States has undergone sizable changes in its population geography since 1790. A major component of these population shifts has been the rapid movement of the frontier westward as settled area increased. This research shows the population deconcentration effects of the great migration from relatively high densities along the eastern seaboard to the sparsely populated west. This dispersal was followed by concentration stemming from massiv…
Family transitions in Latin America: First intercourse, first union and first birth
This paper examines the initiation of sexual activity, first marriage and first birth as key steps in family formation. These events mark the transition to adulthood and generally occur in the late teens and early twenties in most Latin American countries. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine the timing of these events across birth cohorts, comparing urban and rural areas, countries, cultural regions and educational groups. …
The Settlement of the United States from 1790 to 1990: Divergent Rates of Growth and the End of the Frontier
The timing of the American frontier's closing can be determined through an analysis of the patterns and rates of settlement growth in the United States-based on historical county boundaries, population data from U.S. censuses, and a minimum of two people per square mile to classify a region as settled. Trends in the settlement of the contiguous areas of the country indicate three periods of population settlement-1790 to 1840, 1840 to 1910, and 19…
Income Migration and the Spatial Redistribution of Poverty and Income in the Mountain West Region during the 1990s
The purpose of this research is to understand how rapid population growth in the Mountain West region in the U.S. during the 1990s has affected the spatial distribution of income and poverty. Population growth in the Mountain West during the 1990s was principally through the mechanism of internal and international migration. In previous research we found that much of this growth, and the income growth that went along with it, was highly concentra…
Deserts and oases: The continuing concentration of population in the American Mountain West
Population concentration in United States city‐systems from 1790 to 2000: Historical trends and current phases
Among the industrialised nations of the world, the USA has a relatively short history of urbanisation. This fact and the ready availability of reliable historical data have made the USA a fertile place for studying the nature of urban and regional growth from its earliest beginnings. This paper analyses the patterns of city and hinterland, or city‐system, population concentration in the United States from 1790 to 2000. The Hoover index is employe…
Divergent growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints in the United States, 1990–2004: Diaspora, gathering, and the East–West divide
This paper analyses the spatially divergent growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints from 1990 to 2004 in the US. The Church has been based in Utah since 1847, and its membership continues to be concentrated in the West. However, recent population trends show an ongoing diaspora throughout the country marked by local and regional clusters (or ‘gatherings’) where more rapid growth and larger relative membership sizes are evident. …
US regional income change and migration: 1995–2004
One of the most important concepts found in the migration literature is that it is a selective process, both in terms of who migrates and in the migrants' individual movement trajectories. The selectivity of migration means that the population structure at both origin and destination will change over time through migration, thus influencing the socio‐economic fabric of both sending and receiving regions. In this study we are primarily interested …
From Wilderness to Megalopolis: A Comparative Analysis of County Level Sex Ratios in the United States From 1790 to 1910 Using a Historical GIS
Using a historical Geographic Information System (GIS) and statistical measures, this research examines the sex ratios of the United States between 1790 and 1910 to determine whether men truly outnumbered women on the American Frontier. We used United States Census data combined with historical digital county maps to calculate male-to-female sex ratios by county and settlement density class. We analyzed these ratios using descriptive statistics, …
Genealogy, Migration, and the Intertwined Geographies of Personal Pasts
Genealogical data have tremendous potential to reveal the geographic web of past family connections. In this article we propose a genealogical geography paradigm that utilizes queries of a database containing more than 800 million names to analyze historical migration patterns. Our conceptual model considers hourglass-shaped community ancestry and descendancy hinterlands that spread out from a local place and incorporates the ideas of diaspora, g…
Environmental Hazards as Disamenities: Selective Migration and Income Change in the United States from 2000–2010
An emerging area of migration research is the complex relationship between migration and environmental hazards, broadly defined. Environmental hazards are best viewed through a vulnerability lens, which has two components. The first is exposure - the frequency and duration of the hazardous events-and the second is adaptive capacity - the ability of communities to mitigate, deflect, or absorb the effects of exposure. Because migration is selective…
Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands
Journal Article Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Get access Derek R. Everett. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 302. $29.95. Samuel M. Otterstrom Samuel M. Otterstrom Brigham Young University [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 120, …
The Uneven Landscape of California's Historical Landmarks
Historical markers help preserve and display history and communicate what a group deems important about a place's past. This paper analyzes the changing themes and landscape relevance of California's official historical landmarks. California's thousand‐plus markers are classified and mapped by themes, analyzed for changing topical emphasis over time, and evaluated for landscape presence. The thematic distribution and relative density of these lan…
Historical markers in the western United States: Regional and cultural contrasts
The American West evokes many images in the minds of both its citizens and visitors. Historical markers are one way that regional historical identity has been preserved and displayed over time. Tourists interested in exploring the heritage of local areas can thus find a wealth of valuable site-specific information in these markers. Western states have 1000s of these official landmarks, which commemorate an event, a town, an old building, importan…
Relative Concentrations and Diffusion of Covid-19 across the United States in 2020
Les auteurs étudient la propagation de la COVID-19 (maladie à coronavirus 2019) en termes de cas et de décès dans l’ensemble des États-Unis, à l’aide des données relatives aux comtés à différents niveaux de comparaison. Ils utilisent l’indice de Hoover et l’indice de différentiel géographique pour analyser l’évolution de la concentration de COVID-19 à l’échelle des grandes zones économiques ( city systems), de mai 2020 à décembre 2020. Les auteur…
Development of the Genealogical FamilySearch Database and Expanding Its Use to Map and Measure Multiple Generations of American Migration
Genealogical research is full of opportunities for connecting generations. Millions of people pursue that purpose as they put together family trees that span hundreds of years. These data are valuable in linking people to the people of their past and in developing personal identities, and they can also be used in other ways. The purposes of this paper are to first give a short history of the development and practice of family history and genealog…
Comparative Nicaraguan Migrant and Non-Migrant Experiences in the Early Twenty-First Century
This paper examines the circumstances in which Nicaraguan migrants to Costa Rica found themselves and the situations of families in Nicaragua who had household members who had moved to Costa Rica from the late 1990s to 2012. Through surveys and interviews conducted in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, this paper peers into the immigrant experience of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica and explores such issues as does time in Costa Rica improve the immigrant …
Using Linked Census Records to Study Shrinking Cities in the United States from 1900 to 1940
We develop a data-driven method for linking people in cities over time that can be used in any country that has data tracking the locations of individuals across multiple periods. We apply this process to United States Census data from 1900 through 1940 and find that, of the 1,000 largest cities in 1900, 15 percent experienced a decline in population by 1940. We also use the large data set for this same time period, linking more than 45 million p…
New West and Old West in the Twenty-First Century: The Rich Get Richer
The rural U.S. West is increasingly valued for its unique natural beauty, tourism potential, and the outdoor recreational activities it provides rather than for its grazing potential, lumber mills, or extraction of valuable minerals. With this transition in mind, we examine demographic changes in the region within the context of selective migration. We build on research conducted in the late 1990s that studied the changing spatial patterns of mig…
Analyzing Multi-Generational Gathering and Dispersion to and from Ten 19th-Century American Cities
Genealogy, with its tying of people to places, allows for the study of migration over multiple generations. In this paper we use family history data from FamilySearch.org to analyze the migration of the ancestors of those born between 1865 and 1875 in ten United States cities followed by the migration of descendants of people born in the same city during that same decade. Other work has followed the ancestors for multiple generations, and we have…
Imported Toponymy and the FamilySearch Place Name Database: Mapping North American Communities with European Capital Namesakes
Place names lend themselves very easily to cartographic and geographic research, and they have been studied extensively from these perspectives. Recent technological advances have allowed for a more rapid geographical study of toponyms of many types. An additional, albeit less visible resource with a robust place name system is the FamilySearch genealogical database. FamilySearch is the world leader in open-source genealogical data and hosts a us…
Large-Scale Genealogies Distinguish Frontier from Steady-State Internal Migration
Many studies of human migration focus on modern issues such as economics, politics, urbanization, and commuting. Here, we seek foundational patterns by using very large genealogies to measure migration centuries before modern technologies or census data became available. In Europe and North America from 1400 to 1950 we find two distinct patterns of internal lifetime migration: in most locations and eras we find “steady-state” migration with a pow…
Geography (23 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Population (15 works) · Demography (14 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (14 works) · Economic geography (13 works) · Economics (13 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Demography (9 works)