The survey

LINES RUN BEFORE AND AFTER THE CESSION

This ground's north fence was run before its title moved: the line due east from Lake Michigan's southern extreme — the state line — was surveyed in 1827, the year before the Carey Mission treaty made it a boundary call. Howard dates the county's first public surveys to 1829, run by William Brookfield, the county surveyor, in townships 37 and 38, ranges 1 to 3 east, "included parts of the present townships of Portage, Penn, Clay, German and Warren" (Howard, p. 157), and Chapman preserves the human detail of the grid arriving in this township: Nathan W. Young "pre-empted land when the surveyors were at work here, and also carried chain for the Government surveyors" (Chapman, p. 790) — a settler walking the lines of the survey that would let him buy the ground he stood on. Chapman dates the county's land market from the spring of 1830: "The first entries made were on the 19th day of April, of the same year" (Chapman, p. 338) — in section 11, township 38 north, range 3 east, one tier north of this township, by John Johnston and Samuel Bell; Penn's own first entries are not listed in either county history and belong to The Land, from the tract books. The township survey's own dates and surveyors for this township are the Land and Maps legs' record to print from the survey field notes; this section's statement is the sequence the grid imposed: cession, survey, entry, plat. The plat came last and closes the leg: on 17 November 1837 John A. Henricks — so both county histories spell the name — recorded the first plat of the town of Osceola on the surveyed ground in section 9, at the creek's mouth: the act the Story of Osceola section opens with, at full size, with its 1842 vacatur and the section-16 additions that actually seated the town. Where this section ends is therefore a named line: the ground before the place ends at the plat; the Story of Osceola section and The Land take the record from it.