Not long after I started doing courthouse research in the 1980s, the old County Surveyor showed me these two old plat books in the vault of the records room of the local courthouse that were labeled “Plat Book 1” and “Plat Book 2”. The plat book 1 and 2 that everybody was familiar with began in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The ones in the vault went back to 1792, which is when our county became a county. I remember thumbing through those old books being amazed. Fast forward to the mid 1990s. The courthouse is being renovated and all of the offices are moved temporarily to another location. Everything was so nice when it was done. The Clerk of Court (where our land records are housed) moved back in and all was good. One rainy day when I was in the records room and had some extra time, I went to thumb through those old plat books. I couldn’t find them anywhere. I asked the deputy clerk where they might be but she said the only plat books 1 and 2 she ever knew of were the ones beginning in the late 1800s. So I inquired with Clerk of Court herself as to the whereabouts of those books. I got the same reaction that I got from the deputy clerk. I was adamant and insisted that they been in the vault. The Clerk said “if they existed, they were probably down in the basement in boxes”. None of her staff ever seemed to find time to go look and I never could secure permission to look myself. Last week as I was researching for an upcoming project, I came across a link to a database of old maps. Someone in 1960 had those old books put on microfilm and they are available online. The quality isn’t great but they are still nice to look at. Attached is a plat of a portion of our county seat from 1794.
