Maps and Atlas Collection
Land Ownership Maps and Atlases
County land ownership maps and atlases, often called plat maps or plat books, began to appear in the eastern United States around 1850. Produced by commercial publishers, these maps identified local landowners and provided information about the topographic and cultural features of a county. Plat maps and atlases were compiled from local land records supplemented by the mapmakers' own surveys.
Before the Civil War the usual format was the wall map showing an entire county with its individual landowners. These maps were embellished with illustrations of buildings such as the courthouse, businesses or homes of the wealthy, directories, and city maps. Wall maps were usually quite large, measuring as much as four feet square.
After the Civil War, the county atlas became more popular, though wall maps continued to be published. Atlases were smaller, easier to handle, and allowed the addition of many more profitable features for the publishers. Such features included lists of patrons, biographical sketches and portraits of local landowners, illustrations of farms and businesses, and city maps. These embellishments supplemented the all-important township maps, which showed the boundaries and acreage of farms, locations of churches, cemeteries, schools, quarries, cheese factories and other businesses. The township maps also showed roads and railways, and topographical features such as rivers, lakes, marshlands, and hills.
The earliest plat map published in Wisconsin is an 1857 wall map of Walworth County. The Wisconsin Historical Society has examples of almost every early plat map or atlas published for the state, and continues to collect current atlases today. These maps and atlases offer exceptional research possibilities for local historians, genealogists, and urban and environmental historians.
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