Introduction

Clinton County had a Township Plat book published in 1892 which lists the land owners of property outside of towns/villages. This does not give us family structure, nor tell us anything about people who rented property, nor tell us who lived within the towns. It does give us clues about where the head of a household in the townships might have lived at that point in time, or at least where they owned property. In some cases, it might give us information that a person had died before this book was published since some property is marked as "Estate". It might give us clues for marriages that were often made between reasonably close neighbors and for in-laws that might have been co-owners.

Names were transcribed as close to the spelling on the plats as possible. If there was more than one parcel of land for the same person in the same Section, the parcels were consolidated into a single entry. If there was an obvious spelling error, we left it that way. If the parcel of land was so small that only the initials of the owner were given, such as A. J. B., they were also listed as last initial first followed by a comma, such as B., A. J. Each Township can be viewed in either plat/neighbor sequence or alphabetical sequence.

There is a "Historical Directory of Clinton County, Illinois" listing at the back of the plat book that contains some other interesting data. Perhaps people had to pay a fee to have their names listed in there and only some chose to do that. If people were listed with a Section number and had no property under their name, and no clue on the plat, they were added near the person in that Section with the same last name that owned the most acres. If no Section was listed, that may have meant that the person lived within a town/village. We included those business people as Section 0 since the information was available.

The crowning touch, we think, to this plat book transcription project is the "Total Clinton County" where, theoretically, all the entries in the 15 Townships are combined alphabetically. It cross-references which Township and which Section contains the more detailed plat/neighbor data.

Like all genealogy listings, this should not be taken as gospel but should be used as a springboard for further research.

A special thanks is given to Tom LaCaze, Clinton County Clerk, for the use of "his" 1892 "Plat Book of Clinton County".

  Townships  

The plat maps take some time to display but the wait is worth it.  

 
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This page modified 4 Jun 2014