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Caldwell's 1877 Illustrated Historical Combination Atlas of Clarion County
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Our goal at Ancestor Tracks is to publish maps and land ownership information allowing genealogy researchers to place more precisely the locations where our ancestors lived. The state of Pennsylvania began platting the exact metes-and-bounds tracts of the earliest landowners, township-by-township, starting in 1907, but the Land Office only completed about 1/3 of the state before the project ended. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania did not plat the tracts of the earliest landowners of Clarion County, a county of great interest to one of the proprietors of Ancestor Tracks. In lieu of being able to bring you Warrantee Maps of the earliest settlers of Clarion Co., we are posting Caldwell's Illustrated Historical Combination Atlas of Clarion County, 1877. This map is located in the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. We hope that it will be a useful tool for locating your Clarion County families when coupled with Civil War records and the 1870 and 1880 census records. We are posting only the historical sketch section of the atlas and the land ownership maps. Most of the entire atlas is online, including colored drawings of farms and buildings, homes of prominent citizens, as well as a business directory which includes the occupations, birthplace, and size of land tract. The following township maps are missing at the Library of Congress website: Beaver, Clarion, Elk, Madison, Mill Creek, Paint and Redbank. The Clarion County Historical Society has been transcribing and posting chapters from History of Clarion County, Pennsylvania with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers edited by A. J. Davis, 1887 which can be used in conjuntion with the 1877 atlas. Finally, if your ancestor was actually a first landowner, purchasing his or her property from the colony or state of Pennsylvania rather than an individual, his or her records will be held at the state rather than the county level. Since Clarion County was originally part of Northumberland County, then Lycoming (established in 1795), then split between Venango and Armstrong Counties in 1800, and finally created as Clarion County in 1839, we have published Pennsylvania state Warrant and Patent Registers documenting the original landowners on a CD, First Landowners of PA: Colonial and State Warrant Registers in the PA Archives, Harrisburg, 1682-ca 1940. Click on the township of your choice below. Once the images are loaded, they can be usually enlarged by clicking on them, and they may be saved to your computer by right-clicking and selecting "Save Image As..."
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