Names on the old maps
Who was in town
Beside each town plan, the mapmakers printed a business directory: the lawyers, doctors, merchants, smiths, hotel keepers and county officers who paid to be listed. Here are 331 of those entries from five towns, with the 85 men of Company D, Sixth Michigan Infantry, raised at Dowagiac in 1861, and the 144 families and neighbours who gave the numbered logs of the Pioneer Log Cabin at Cassopolis in 1923, as one roll you can search. Type a surname, a trade or a town.
How to read the roll
- As printed. Names are spelled as the engraver cut them, abbreviations and all: Jas. for James, Wm. for William, Chas. for Charles. A spelling that looks wrong may be the engraver’s, or it may be how the family spelled it then.
- A question mark after a name means the engraving is worn or crowded and we are not sure of our reading. Look at the plan yourself and tell us what you see.
- Who is missing. A directory is not a census. It lists people who paid to appear, so most farmers, labourers, women and children are not here. A handful of entries are also held back because they would give away an answer in the hunt.
- Every entry links to its map. Open it and find the name in the directory beside the plan.
- The log donors of 1923. Each numbered log of the Pioneer Log Cabin is listed with its donor, post-office town and wood, as typed in the cabin’s list. A question mark means the typed line is unclear. The logs are still in the walls.
Found someone of your own? A directory line is a start: it puts a person in a town, in a trade, in a year. Deeds, censuses, newspapers and probate files can take the story further. We can help.
Sources: the business directories printed beside the town plans on the Map of the Counties of Cass, Van Buren and Berrien, Michigan (Philadelphia: Geil, Harley & Siverd, 1860), Library of Congress; and on Geil & Harley’s Map of Elkhart Co. Indiana (1861), American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries. Public domain. Transcribed for Project Scroll. The log donors: the 1923 Pioneer Log Cabin Museum Searchable Donor List, compiled by Marcia Gaskin (Cassopolis, 2012), read against its page images for Project Scroll.