Pope County, Ill., Survey Plat Book, 1830s-1890s | Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

This collection contains one volume of land survey records from Pope County, Illinois, and includes three hundred and seventy pages of hand-drawn entries covering almost every township from the 1830s to the 1890s.

Pope County was founded in 1816 and is the southeasternmost county in Illinois. The county was named after Nathaniel Pope, who served as the secretary of Illinois territory from 1809-1816 and a U.S. district judge for Illinois from 1819-1850. His efforts led to the statehood of Illinois in 1818.

This collection contains one volume of three hundred and seventy pages with hand-drawn entries recording surveys of Pope County, Illinois, from the 1830s until the 1890s. Pages document surveying landmarks, such as oak, sycamore, or gum trees, and land ownership, including the names of owners and when they acquired particular sections. The collection may have been an official county record or belonged to a land survey company. The author of the volume may have been James Hanna (1821-1909), who served as county surveyor of Pope County, Illinois, during the nineteenth century.

The Library purchased this volume for the Map and Geography Library in 1971. It was transferred to the Illinois Historical Survey, predecessor to the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections, in 1975.