Welcome to our first online set of PLAT MAPS
for Florence County GenWeb Project. If you are familiar
with PLAT MAPS, you already appreciate their value in genealogy
and family history. If you haven't worked with PLAT MAPS
before, here's a brief
explanation:PLAT MAPS
are maps of a county, divided into townships that show property
ownership, the locations of schools, cemeteries, churches and
town halls, etc. Each TOWNSHIP is assigned a TOWNSHIP and
RANGE number, i.e. T.39N R.16E. Each 36-square-mile parcel
identified by a township and range number is further divided
into 36 SECTIONS, each section theoretically being 1
square mile, or 640 acres. The cells are numbered "boustrophedonically",
or "as the cow plows", which means that the numbers wrap around
in an "s" shape. Such a numbering system was easier for the
surveyors to use when they were doing the original surveying.
And what if I find my ancestor's name on
the plat map? Since plat maps are lists of LAND
OWNERSHIP, you then know that your ancestor OWNED PROPERTY in
Florence County. There will be a record of the DEED filed
at the courthouse when the property was purchased, possibly a
mortgage was filed when acquiring the property, records when the
property was sold and if the ancestor died while owning the
property, there will be a will or probate record explaining how
the property was disposed of following his/her death.
As you can see from some of these maps, a
large portion of the land was owned by the Railroads and Timber
Companies. These older maps do not reflect land set aside
for the Nicolet National Forest (1933).
I will be posting more of these PLAT MAPS as I
locate them -- if you have access to any of the OLDER PLAT MAPS
(prior to 1940), please consider sharing them with us.
It's as simple as scanning in the pages via email or sending
xeroxed copies in -- the pages you are looking at are from the
1925 Florence Plat Maps. They were from a paper copy xerox
made possible by the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.
Many thanks to their Map Department.
This map will take a while to load and is best viewed
"maximized" computer screen width. I decided to keep the
maps LARGE so that the names & details are easily read.
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