Plat Maps Give Your Family Tree Research the Edge!
Plat maps are an underutilized resource for genealogy researchers. Plat maps show ownership of land in rural areas. Plat maps were (and still are) used in the states that adopted the Public Land Survey System which for all intents and purposes is a “square” system. Township and Range is the unit of area in the Public Land Survey System. It is most common in the Midwest and Plains states.
Plat maps are published generally as a county atlas. Some were compiled into books by professional publishers such as George Ogle. Others were published locally. Usually, a plat map shows the area of one township within a county. On a plat map you will find the names of owners which is a wonderful resource for genealogists! With this information, you can locate the exact property where your ancestors lived as well as find out who their neighbors were, how close the school was or other features that were nearby the home. You might even discover other related families that lived nearby. Plat maps also usually show features like streams, railroad tracks, and roads. There are many, many plat atlases that were published throughout the 1800s and early 1900s which is such a wonderful resource for ancestry research. There are some companies that still publish plat maps today that you can buy over the internet. These will show current land owners. Click on the link to see an example of a plat map.
How do you read plat maps?
Township and range
The concept of Township and Range is similar to Latitude and Longitude in that township is measured in a North-South fashion and range is measured East-West. Each township has 36 sections. A section is one square mile (640 acres). Each section can be divided in half or quarter sections. The property is read from the smallest division to the largest. An example is the NE 1/4 SW 1/4, Section 18, T5N, R15W. This is the “Northeast quarter of the Southwest quarter of Section 18 in Township 5 North and Range 15 West.” A good article to get a better understanding of this can be found here.
Where do you find plat maps?
There are a lot of websites, especially in the USGenWeb, that have scanned some plat maps and placed them online for free. If you can’t find one for your county of interest, you may want to check out Ebay and see if an individual map or perhaps an atlas is up for bids. Of course, you should always investigate the local library in the county where your ancestors lived. If the local library doesn’t have anything, then you may want to check the state library. These days, most libraries have their catalogs online so you can find out right from the comfort of your home.
Make sure to read my article about the BLM-GLO land records as well. These records are also in the township and range system.
You can use this search box below to look in Google for plat maps of the counties you are interested in. A good search term would be “buffalo nebraska plat maps.” Give it a try and see what you can find!
