The first county map: Stokes and Shober, 1863

One map on six sheets, every landowner named

The county's first full portrait is M. W. Stokes's Map of St. Joseph Co., Indiana, published at Philadelphia in 1863 — engraved, printed and mounted by Charles Shober, as the sheet's own credit line runs, and entered for copyright in 1863 in the Clerk's Office of the U.S. District Court for the District of Indiana. The Library of Congress copy, in the Geography and Map Division (call G4093.S2G46 1863 .S7; digital id g4093s.la000168), is one map on six sheets mounted on linen, 131 by 171 centimeters assembled. Its content, as the Congress catalog states it, is the whole evidentiary kit of the landowner-map trade: the property owners indicated parcel by parcel across the townships, a population statistical table, a distance table, and views of residential, public and commercial buildings around its borders — with inset plans of Mishawaka, Lakeville, North Liberty, Oceola, Terre Coupee, West Troy, Plainfield and New Carlisle. The Mishawaka inset is boundary-printed here: it is the neighboring city's portrait inside this county's map, and Mishawaka's own build will treat it at full size.

The catalog disagrees with itself, and the disagreement is printed. The Library of Congress record's imprint and copyright lines date the map 1863, and the St. Joseph County Public Library's finding aid lists it the same way — "1863 Charles Shober's Map of St. Joseph County, Indiana" — but the Congress record's own Dates field says 1866, and its recommended citation prints the publication as "[1866]." Nothing in the record reconciles the three years. The map is carried in this section at its copyright year, 1863, with the 1866 catalog date named beside it, and the working rule for every later sheet in this section is the same: a map's date is the date its maker put on it, and a catalog that says otherwise is a conflict to print, not a number to average.

The map still works for a living. The county's modern National Register documentation reads from it as evidence: the nomination record for the Bowman Creek culvert works the 1863 map for the Wenger family's 150-acre tract and the Bowman and Studebaker parcels along the creek, and a Portage Manor register document runs a German Township map sequence that begins with this sheet. A wall map sold by subscription in the Civil War years has become, a century and a half later, a primary source the county's own preservation filings cite by year — which is the standing of every good landowner map in this section: drawn to sell land, kept because it recorded it.

Sources:

1. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division — catalog record for Map of St. Joseph Co., Indiana (M. W. Stokes, Philadelphia, 1863; LCCN 2013593163): the Shober engraving credit, the 1863 copyright entry, the six-sheet linen-mounted format and dimensions, the landowner content, tables, views and insets, LC Land Ownership Maps no. 168 — and the same record's Dates field and recommended citation at 1866.
2. St. Joseph County Public Library map case finding aid (20 December 2021) — "1863 Charles Shober's Map of St. Joseph County, Indiana."
3. National Register documentation for St. Joseph County (Bowman Creek culvert record; Portage Manor record) — the 1863 map worked as evidence for the Wenger tract and the township map sequence.