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Within the survey's Section 2, the town itself was a separate, smaller act of drawing. John T. Barr of Baltimore and John McCorkle of Piqua, the townsite buyers whose purchase The Land chapter tells, had their town laid off in May 1824: the Original Plat, 118 lots over 109 acres, in the ground bounded today by Barr Street, Washington Boulevard, Superior Street, and the alley between Calhoun and Harrison. Two of its decisions are still visible from any window downtown. Its streets were laid parallel to Columbia Street rather than to the compass, which is why the downtown grid sits at its old riverfront angle to this day. And it reserved a public square at its heart, with Court Street as the square's eastern boundary — the courthouse square that anchors every Fort Wayne map since.
The plat's own paperwork was the county's first record. It was recorded on May 20, 1824 — Allen County's records then being kept in Randolph County, the entry was filed at Winchester. The dating of the survey behind it is carried two ways in the old authorities, and this history keeps both, as The Land chapter does: Dawson's Charcoal Sketches (1872) tells the laying-off as May 1824, while the 1889 county history dates the work of the surveyor, Robert Young of Piqua, to August 1822. What the buyers paid is likewise left open here: a price of $2,838.43 circulates in local genealogical writing, but no record reached states the price, and the figure stands unconfirmed until the Fort Wayne land-office entries at the Indiana State Archives are read against it.
The sheet itself survives in the city's own custody. The History Center holds the plat and publishes it in its online collections as the object record "Plat: LD 18" — the founding map of Fort Wayne, drawn to sell lots, now the first document in the city's cartographic archive.
Sources: John Dawson, Charcoal Sketches (1872), on the May 1824 laying-off; Valley of the Upper Maumee River (1889), on Robert Young's August 1822 survey; Streets of Fort Wayne (Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1953), on the 118 lots and the plat's streets; History Center online object record "Plat: LD 18" (fwhistorycenter.org); ACGSI street-names page, for the $2,838.43 figure carried here as unconfirmed.