County Atlases
This article originally appeared
in Exchange, a
newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical
Society.
(Volume 31, Number 2, Spring 1989) It is
the ninth in a series of articles titled Researching
Community History. The series highlights
the Society's resources available to local
historians. It was written by Tom McKay,
retired local history coordinator for the
Wisconsin Historical Society.
During the years between the Civil War and World War I, an active commercial enterprise developed in the publication of county atlases. Maps of rural land ownership in a county formed the core of each of these publications. However, as commercial ventures, publishing companies added a wide variety of information to their atlases that they hoped would increase the number sold. Most of the atlases also relied on the monetary contributions of patrons or subscribers to underwrite the cost of publication. In return, the atlases carried biographical sketches, directories of the patrons, or engraved illustrations memorializing the subscribers who made the publications financially viable. The formulas used by publishers to achieve commercial success in the nineteenth century make the county atlas a valuable, and sometimes surprising, source of information for local historians today.
The Wisconsin Historical Society
holds an extensive collection
of Wisconsin county atlases (as well as county
atlases from many other states) in its archives.
While the collection does not includes all
atlases published for Wisconsin counties, most
of the state's counties are represented in
the archives by one or more atlases. Atlases
did not appear on a regular schedule but only
when a company decided to undertake this complex
subscription publishing venture. Many counties
had only two or three atlases published during
this period, and many northern Wisconsin counties
did not become subjects of printed atlases
until after 1900.
In the search for commercial
success, nearly every atlas publisher employed
a different formula for the content. The plat
maps of rural land ownership represented the
one common denominator. The plat of each township
in the county received its own page in the
atlas. These plat maps identified the boundaries
and the name of the owner of each parcel of
rural land in the township. A small black square
in the parcel indicated the presence of a home
and/or farmstead. The township plats identified
the routes of railroad lines by name and also
showed roads and streams. Most atlases identified
the sites of school and church buildings, and
many included other prominent features such
as creameries, cemeteries and marshlands. An
overall county map at the beginning of the
atlas showed the location of the township within
the county.
County atlases published by the Minnesota magazine, The Farmer , printed lists of rural families organized by the township in which they resided and the post office where they received their mail. Each family's entry also included the names of family members residing in the home, the number of acres in the farm, and even, where applicable, the name of the farm. For example, the G. G. Williams family which resided in Unity Township in Trempealeau County called their farm "Violet Meadows." While names of family members and the number of acres in a farm can be found in the manuscript records of the federal census, the census was taken only once every ten years. The county atlases published by The Farmer provide a supplementary source of specific information about some families in a non-census year. This series of atlases also noted other useful information including towns in the state with telegraph stations and post offices authorized to prepare money orders.
To increase the marketability
of their atlases, publishers usually included
plats of cities and villages. These maps did
not show individual homes or land ownership.
However, they usually marked the locations
of schools, churches, hotels, opera houses,
and similar buildings of interest to the general
public. Large manufacturing concerns often
appeared on the city and village maps. For
example, the Medford plat in the 1913 Taylor
County atlas published by George A. Ogle and
Company indicated each of the major structures
at the excelsior factory, brickyard, tannery
and sawmills.
Publishers prepared general information to repeat in each county atlas they printed. A world map and a map of the United States were standard features in most county atlases. The Wisconsin county atlases published by The Farmer all featured a mileage chart of distances between selected Wisconsin cities. George A. Ogle and Company included a standard digest of civil government, chronology of world history, and general information on banking and business methods in the county atlases it published.
While companies used standard "boilerplate" as an inexpensive device to produce a more substantial publication, unique information about the county provided the primary commercial appeal of the atlases. Some publishers used a historical sketch of the county as part of their format for a county atlas. The sketches listed the names of early settlers, dates in the establishment of civil government, and incidents of interest from the county's early years. The historical sketch in W. Belden and Company's 1876 atlas for Milwaukee County recounts the rivalry between east side settlers and west side residents over the first bridge across the river. The historical sketch also featured tables of statistical information such as the growth of population by decades. The sketches often included more contemporary economic data than historical statistics. Tables in the 1876 Milwaukee County atlas listed economic data such as commerce through the lake port, value of local manufacturers, and wholesale sales from the 1874 report of the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce. To appeal to Milwaukee's German population, this atlas printed its historical sketch in both English and German.
County atlases employed a variety
of methods to acknowledge the patrons and subscribers
who provided much of the money to support the
cost of publication. Virtually all atlases
carried lists of patrons. Many rewarded larger
subscribers by including portraits, illustrations
of farmsteads, or biographical sketches of
the individuals. Portraits of subscribers in
the 19th-century atlases appeared as engravings,
but by the 1910s atlases began running photographic
portraits. Publishers also heavily illustrated
their atlases with engravings of the farmsteads
or businesses of subscribers. Comparisons with
extant photographs reveal a concern for accuracy
in producing the engraved illustrations.
The biographical sketches in county atlases reflect the commercial system used to produce the publications. In most cases, publishing company employees solicited the subscriptions, collected biographical data from the subscribers, and wrote the individual sketches of the subscribers. Naturally, the sketches preserve the history of those subscribers who were able and willing to pay rather than individuals chosen purely for historical reasons. The Winnebago County atlas published by Brant and Fuller in 1889 demonstrates the potential shortcomings in a list of biographies created by the subscription system. Its 42 pages of biographies contain more than 800 entries — but not one biographical sketch of a woman.
Paid advertising represented yet another component in the commercial formula for most county atlases, and these ads form an additional historical record. Typically, advertising sections did not appear in county atlases until the twentieth century. Neither the 1877 nor 1895 Grant County atlas, for example, carried advertising. However, the 1918 Grant County atlas published by George A. Ogle and Company had an advertising section of nine pages that presented 345 ads. These advertisements represented businesses from virtually every community in the county. The businesses placing ads ranged from banks and hospitals to bakeries and newsstands.
Although they developed content
largely around commercial concerns, county
atlases of the 19th and early 20th centuries
remain useful historical documents. As archival
collections, the atlases must be used by researchers
in the Archives Research Room at the Wisconsin
Historical Society. In addition to the atlases
held in Madison, the Society has placed all
duplicate copies of atlases in the collections
of the appropriate Area
Research Centers throughout
the state. Local historians can turn to county
atlases in these collections as valuable tools
in researching county history and the often
poorly documented history of rural areas. |
