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1863–1895 and the subscription atlases
The first county-map class is documented for this ground by the maps the Cole tracing actually used: an 1863 St. Joseph County map showing Cole family land south of town, and an 1895 county map showing Cole property just south of town — two sheets, thirty-two years apart, in which North Liberty appears as a named place in a farm township whose landowners are the map's real subject. Between and around them runs the subscription-atlas trade the whole county shared: the 1875 Illustrated Historical Atlas of St. Joseph County, whose North Liberty material includes both the town plat and an illustrated view of the North Liberty Manufacturing Company's works, is the atlas of record for this town — part map, part advertisement, its business views paid for by the businesses shown, printed here as persuasion as well as evidence, in the floor's form. Later county atlases and plat books continue the class into the twentieth century at county frame; a North Liberty-specific atlas after 1875 was not separately read — named gap, settler: the Indiana State Library's county-atlas holdings for St. Joseph County.