The person to ask is Peter Bol, a professor who has done a lot of work with arc-GIS in historical research at Harvard. You can get a sense of his project here: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/

A good survey of the field of historical GIS is Ian Gregory and Paul Ell's book _Historical GIS_.

Margret and John,

Thank you for the info,

Hein Klemann

Try Anne Knowles at Middlebury College for ArcGIS in U.S. historical geography applications.