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RG-17 Records of the Land Office
MELISH-WHITESIDE MAPS, 1816-1821. {series #17.534}
Washington County PA Map drawn in 1817
If your ancestor is not on this early map but you know they resided in the county between 1816-1821, your only option is to use Land Deeds to prove that they owned land here. Remember, one could own land but reside elsewhere. Look in Deeds and Land Warrants to find ownership.
The maps would have been on oversized paper to show one full county. The originals are housed at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission which created the scanned images online in PDF format.
Scanned and cropped image of the 1817 Melish-Whiteside Map of Washington
County PA
To assist researchers, I copied the map from PDF to JPG format. BUT to read the item I had to enlarge it, then split the enlargement into multiple images after enlarging the PDF image. I started in the left-top corner of Washington County (NW corner) through to the SW corner; then there are 4 sets, each going from north to south to cover far-left-center, left-center, right-center, and far-right-center; and lastly, one set going from the top-right (NEN) to bottom-right (NES). I will do my best to display these smaller pieces here; they are not 'perfect' cuts. To make sure I got every item shown, sometimes I made overlapping images. Click on a thumbnail to see a larger version of that section.
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Source information: Record Group 17 (RG-17) of Land Maps were produced by John Melish a geographer, traveler, and entrepeneur who convinced the Pennsylvania legislature to pay him to produce the first set of official land maps. Duputy surveyors spread out across PA counties between 1816 and 1821 to compile the works, then sent them to Mr. Melish to construct one larger Pennsylvania Land Map. The smaller county maps, however, were copied by clerks before sending them on to Mr. Melish. The first clerk to execute copies was John Whitesides, and the maps became known as The Whiteside Maps, or Melish-Whiteside. The maps were submitted to the legislature in March 1822 and were deemed detailed and accurate. Scanned images online include county maps from forty-four of the Commonwealth's sixty-seven counties. From
Pennsylvania Historical and Musuem, RG-17, Records of the Land Office, MELISH-WHITESIDE MAPS, 1816-1821. {series #17.534} |
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