One of the most popular forms of American cartography during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the county landownership map or atlas. Hundreds of these atlases were published before 1939, depicting virtually every county in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest, as well as selected counties of every other state of the union. Most of them were quite large in scale-the scale of the maps of townships in this atlas is a half-mile to the inch. They provided detailed information about the extent and ownership of individual land parcels throughout a given county, as well as many details about topography and natural features; vegetation and fields; roads and railroads; villages and towns; administrative divisions; and the locations of schools, churches, and farmsteads. Today, we assume this sort of mapping to be the responsibility of state and federal agencies, such as the United States Geological Survey (founded in 1879). It is remarkable that so much of the country was in fact mapped first in exquisite detail (though with less accuracy than a USGS map) by private enterprises such as W.R. Brink & Co.

The economic viability of the landownership map and atlas was due in large measure to the widespread adoption of lithography, a relatively cheap and simple method of mass-producing maps, by American commercial publishers from the late 1840s. One particular advantage of the new technique over the established copperplate and woodcut techniques was that it made it possible for a draftsman to directly transfer a right-reading image to a printing "stone." Thus, even a relatively unskilled cartographer could produce clear-if not always elegant-printed maps from quickly sketched drafts. Hence it was possible to obtain serviceable maps of even obscure places at relatively low cost. Perhaps more important was the increasing business sophistication of American commercial cartographers. By the middle of the 1800s, they had learned that the costs of compiling and producing local maps could be deferred by lining up local advertisers and sponsors, who paid fees in return for prominent mentions of their businesses on the published maps. After the Civil War the publishers of elaborate county atlases carried this principle to its logical extreme. During the information gathering phases, representatives of these firms approached local landowners and businessmen to become subscribers. In exchange for these subscriptions the map publishers offered to include a lithographic sketch of their property or business, or perhaps a portrait of their family or prized pig to the atlas's complement of township maps and plats of towns and villages. Local historical sketches and biographies of "prominent citizens" were also added to the mix, swelling the atlases to hundreds of attractive pages. These features had a special appeal in places like Illinois in the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, when the generation that had first settled a community in the 1820s, 30s, or 40s paused to look back on its achievements. The survival of so many copies of these atlases to this day is proof of the sentimental value many families placed on these books-and, not incidentally, it has provided a great resource to historians of nineteenth-century rural America.

The Edwardsville, Illinois, firm of W.R. Brink & Co. was particularly well known for its charming depictions of entire individual farmsteads, which supplemented its many county atlases. We have reproduced a combined view (at upper right) and map of the farm of Jonathan Miller, which lay just northwest of Athens, the oldest town in the county. An accompanying biographical sketch of Miller tells us that he left his native New Jersey when he was 23, "led by that spirit of enterprise which has brought so many of the best men of our Atlantic seaboard to the new and beautiful West." He came to this farm from Fulton Co, Illinois, in 1840, and set up shop as a tanner for fifteen years. Thus, he missed by about two years the distinction of having as a near neighbor, a certain Abraham Lincoln, who lived in nearby Salem (or new Salem-already an extinct community in 1874) until the winter of 1837-38. Miller's first wife, Susan, died in 1852. All five of his children by that marriage also died. But he took a second wife, Elizabeth Claypool, daughter of an early settler of the county, late in 1852, and had two children by that marriage. Mr. Miller's chosen trade may account for the fact that his farm is so close to town that it has the local railway station in its midst. We surmise that he had given up the tanning business in the 1850s in favor of raising his own livestock, stock-raising being one of the mainstays of Menard County's economy in the 1870s.

The map provides a fine glimpse of a self-sufficient livestock farm. About half the farm-57 acres-was devoted to a fenced pasture, which has direct access through a gate to a railway siding. At one point a fenced lane allows cattle to cross the railway to smaller pasture that doubles as a Crab Apple grove. Such privileged access to a valuable rail connection suggests that Mr. Miller's pasture may have served as a holding pen for the cattle of the district. Perhaps these facilities date back to Miller's days as a tanner. Unfortunately, the text of the atlas provides no confirmation of this conjecture. Most of the remaining acres on the farm were devoted to the hay and corn needed to feed the cattle. A woodland at the north end of the farm also provided for some of Miller's needs for lumber and fuel. A garden of perhaps two acres also nearly surrounds the house. Between it and the railway is a stable or pigsty, next to which we can make out a pump that supplies water for the household. The "stock well" is some distance away, just off the road near the woodland.

The small public school building just north (right) of the railway was in 1874 on the point of extinction. The Athens district had just been combined with an adjacent one, and a new larger building costing "between six and seven thousand dollars" was underway.