Illinois State Library

Illinois County Land Ownership Maps and Atlases

The nineteenth century county atlas/plat book is more popular than ever, not only with genealogists, but with newer audiences finding them useful for historic site and environmental research. Word is spreading on the usefulness the county atlas or plat book and the literature about them grows. This is not a guide to the literature on the genre, however, but rather a simple checklist of the Illinois State Library's (ISL) collection of nineteenth and twentieth century plat books and maps.

As is well known, the county plat book, and the sheet map before it, was created by private concerns and sold by subscription. Unlike the original government surveys or plats (which the Illinois State Library owns on circulating microfilm) before them, the plat maps or books show who owned the land parcels. The earliest example of the county land ownership map that the State Library owns is 1859, one for Hancock, Winnebago, and Stephenson. Because these maps and atlases were sold by subscription as commercial ventures, some Illinois counties were mapped several times over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, creating quite a historical run. Those counties less populated may have had no map or atlas published for them. For those counties, the only county level mapping available at the Illinois State Library, after the original government plat, may be the county page in the 1871 and 1876 state atlases. This information, of course, will be less detailed than the township pages in the county atlas and do not show detailed land ownership. The State Library also owns the circa 1923-1925 Hixson state atlas which has township mapping showing land owners, except for Johnson County.

The Illinois State Library owns a very extensive collection of nineteenth and twentieth century plat books and maps. It does not include every one published, but its unique value is that ISL's collection circulates, whereas most such collections do not. Specific libraries' holdings of these county plat books and maps are noted in several publications. Karrow's Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900: Illinois covers county atlases and maps in the Illinois State Historical Library, the University of Illinois, the Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Library, and a few others, but not the State Library. It obviously only reaches to 1900. Gaetjens' annotated bibliography lists the holdings of the Illinois State Library, as well as, two other libraries and reaches up to 1929. The Conzen, Akerman and Thackeray bibliography and union list specifies the State Library's holdings and many other libraries' collections up to 1930. LeGear's work indicates the State Library's holdings, and others, up to the early 1950s. The Bannon-Nilles directory lists historical and current plat books held by many small public libraries in Illinois. The State Library's county land ownership maps and atlases are all individually on the OCLC and ILLINET Online databases, but are comprehensively listed here separately for ease of use. This list includes nineteenth and twentieth century maps and atlases acquired as of February 2001.

There are several sub-sets to this collection as explained in the following:

• ISL bought a paper photocopy of all the Illinois maps listed in LC's Land Ownership Maps: A Checklist ... and then purchased the entire microfiche set for all states when LC released the whole collection in microfiche. A list of the whole set is available as LC Geography and Map Division's Reference Note No. 4. ISL will make microfiche copies of the maps for patrons.

• ISL owns hundreds of the original late nineteenth and early twentieth century full-color hard copy atlases or plat books. Reprints of these are purchased as discovered, especially of years not owned in original form.

• ISL owns two circulating sets of the Illinois (plus one set of the Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) section of Research Publications' Old Northwest microfilm collection of county histories and atlases. A separate index for each state was published.

• To help preserve the original atlases which ISL owns, but which were not duplicated on the Old Northwest film, the Micrographics Department of the Secretary of State's Office filmed them. All atlases for the same county are on one reel.

• The W.W. Hixson Company atlases are an important resource in the county plat book arena from about the 1910s to the 1940s. The major problem with them is that the publisher did not date them. Many libraries or individuals have tried to date them since they represent a major time frame that no one else covers. In the fall of 1990, a statewide volunteer effort dated about twenty of the Hixson county plat books owned by ISL. For the remaining eighty counties, the date given in LeGear's bibliography for the copy at ISL is what appears in the following list.

• Sidwell Studios bought the Hixson stock in the 1940s apparently, but also started publishing their own platbook, a much more detailed product, in loose-leaf format. ISL owns these plat books for only a few counties.

• In the 1950s, Rockford Map Publishers emerged from the Hixson Company. ISL has had a standing order since the 1960s for their plat books and should have everything they published since then, but production varies a great deal depending upon the county. Rockford atlases have been retrospectively purchased, as have other companies' atlases, to fill in the gaps.

All these atlases are available for circulation and interlibrary loan with the following exceptions:

• the most current plat book is reference.
• microfilm may be substituted for the original atlas, especially if the original is in poor condition.
• microfiche is duplicated and the patron may keep the copy.

Please contact your local library to borrow these atlases from the Illinois State Library.

Explanations of the List

County: The list is in alphabetical order by the name of the county. Some plat books cover more than one county. When two or three counties are covered, the plat book is listed under each county.

Year: After the county, the date is the most important item. The atlases are in order basically by the year or years covered by the map or plat book, with the latest first. Usually this is the year of publication, except in the case of reprints. Reprints often combine two or three old atlases. Hence the double or triple dates in the year column.

Call Number: This is the Illinois State Library's specific call number for each piece.

Index: Other sources, such as the Gaetjens and the Conzen, Akerman, and Thackeray works, indicate the features of the original nineteenth and early twentieth century atlases, but neither of those works deal at length with reprints. So this column is used in this list mainly when an index has been added to a reprint that was not in the original atlas. Usually this is an index of names on the map. "Included" means that an additional index is published as part of the reprint edition. When a different call number appears in the index column, a separate book under that call number indexes that plat book.

Publisher: This is the publisher's column. When the plat book is a reprint, the publisher listed is the reprint publisher rather than the original. When the column is blank, the Secretary of State's microfilm includes plat books from more than one publisher and the publishers are evident from the entry for the original atlas. The "Sidwell/Hixson" entry simply indicates that the Sidwell sticker was placed over Hixson imprint on the ISL copy of the Hixson atlases.

Copies: A numeral indicates the number of copies ISL owns.

Pres: This column indicates which atlases have been preserved (each page deacidified and the atlas post-bound) and is mainly for internal use.

Checklist of Illinois County Land Ownership Maps and Atlases PDF

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Footnotes

1. Atlas of the State of Illinois, to which is added ... Chicago: Warner, Higgins & Beers, 1871.
   (Ref. OVERSIZE 912.773 ATLA).

2. Atlas of the State of Illinois, to which are added ... Chicago: Union Atlas Co., 1876.
   (Ref. OVERSIZE 912.773 U58).

3. Karrow, Robert W., ed. Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981.
   (Ref. 016.912 CHEC)

4. Gaetjens, Stuart. An Annotated Bibliography of Illinois County Landownership Maps and Atlases Through 1929. Monitcello, IL: Vance Bibliographies, 1991.
   (Ref. 016.35 PUBL P-3107).

5. Conzen, Michael P., Akerman, James R., and Thackery, David T. Illinois County Landownership Map and AtlasBibliography and Union List. Springfield, IL: Illinois Cooperative Collection Management Coordinating Committee, Illinois Board of Higher Education, 1991
   (I.912.773 CONZ).

6. LeGear, Clara Egli. United States Atlases. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1953.
   (Ref. LC5.2:Un35/v.1 & 2).

7. Bannon-Nilles, Phyllis L., et al. A Directory of Illinois Libraries: Historical Resources for Environmental Site Assessments. Champaign, IL. : Illinois State Geological Survey, 1999.
   (I557.7308 OFS 1999-8)

8. Stephenson, Richard W., comp. Land Ownership Maps: A Checklist of Nineteenth century United States County Maps in the Library Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1967.
   (Ref. LC5.2:L22)

9. Research Publications. Reel Index to the Microfilm Collection of County and Regional Histories of the "Old Northwest". Series IV: Illinois. (Cover title: Reel Index to the Microfilm Collection of Illinois County and Regional Histories and Atlases). Woodbridge, CT: 1976.
   (Ref. 016.9773 RESE).