Family Maps of Van Buren County, Michigan

250 pages with 62 total maps Locating original landowners in maps has never been an easy task-until now. This volume in the Family Maps series contains newly created maps of original landowners (patent maps) in what is now Van Buren County, Michigan, gleaned from the indexes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But it offers much more than that. For each township in the county, there are two additional maps accompanying the patent map: a road map and a map showing waterways, railroads, and both modern and many historical city-centers and cemeteries. Included are indexes to help you locate what you are looking for, whether you know a person's name, a last name, a place-name, or a cemetery. The combination of maps and indexes are designed to aid researchers of American history or genealogy to explore frontier neighborhoods, examine family migrations, locate hard-to-find cemeteries and towns, as well as locate land based on legal descriptions found in old documents or deeds. The patent-maps are essentially plat maps but instead of depicting owners for a particular year, these maps show original landowners, no matter when the transfer from the federal government was completed. Dates of patents typically begin near the time of statehood and run into the early 1900s. What's Mapped in this book (that you'll not likely find elsewhere) . . . 3366 Parcels of Land (with original landowner names and patent-dates labeled in the relevant map) 19 Cemeteries plus . . . Roads, and existing Rivers, Creeks, Streams, Railroads, and Small-towns (including some historical), etc. What YEARS are these maps for? Here are the counts for parcels of land mapped, by the decade in which the corresponding land patents were issued: Decade Parcel-count 1830s 2629 1840s 157 1850s 553 1860s 6 1870s 2 1890s 1 1900s 6 1920s 12 What Cities and Towns are in Van Buren County, Michigan (and in this book)? Almena, Bangor, Berlamont, Bloomingdale, Braywood, Breedsville, Covert, Crystal Beach, Decatur, Fish Corners, Friendsville, Fritzburg, Glendale, Gobles, Grand Junction, Hartford, Indian Grove, Keeler, Kendall, Kibbie, Lacota, Lawrence, Lawton, Linden Hills, Maple Grove Corners, Mattawan, McDonald, Mentha, Palisades Park, Paw Paw, Pine Grove, Sister Lakes, South Haven, Stoughton Corners, Sulphur Springs, Teapot Dome, Toquin, West Bangor, Wildwood, Woodland Beach