Fisher Land in 1881

I've been looking at the history of Wayne County, Illinois lately. I've read so much about Edwards County, the home of Albion and Dixon Precinct, where the Dixon clan lived from the time of their arrival in America. But my grandmother's family, the Fisher's, are from just across the county border in Leech Township, of Wayne County. A site called IlGenWeb has a good deal of history about Wayne County. One thing is a very detailed history put together in 1954 as a PhD. dissertation by a local resident. There is a lot of good detail, but nothing specifically about the Fisher family.

When I drove over to the Fisher homestead, near the Little Wabash River, dad's cousins pointed out the old bridge and the site of the old Chandler schoolhouse, where my grandmother and her sisters went to school. We drove through the little town of Golden Gate, which is north of the Fisher farm. It turns out there used to be a little town called Scottsville just east of the farm where my grandmother was raised.

One of the things on the site is a section containing a couple of plat maps showing the extent and location of Fisher landholdings.

The 1881 plat shows that J. F. Fisher, who was my grandmother's grandfather ("Grandpa Fisher's father) owned quite a bit of land. I'm not sure anyone in the Anderson branch of the family ever owned that much land. Of course, most of us weren't farmers. I know that Uncle Warren and Aunt Wilma Thacker own land near Spencer, Indiana, but I'm not sure how much land is included in their farm. I guess we're mostly "towners" now. I'd love to know if any of the more recent generations have gone back to farming or owning larger parcels of land. My best read of the map shows that J. F. Fisher owned 320 acres in total with the largest piece being 120 acres. These pieces were pretty close together. The site of the house where Rude Fisher and his wives raised my grandmother was not the same site as the residence of J. F. Fisher, which is marked on the 1881 map. This makes sense, as J. F. Fisher lived until after Della was married, and her father and grandfather would have had separate residences most of her life.

Now I have another thing to do when I return to Albion.... try to see if the older house is still standing or there is any sign of it left! I also want to get my hands on an old plat map from the old days in Dixon Precinct of Edwards County!

By the way, you can clearly see the Chandler property on the map, just north and east of the Fisher properties. The schoolhouse was located on the southeast corner of that propery. It burned down a few years ago.

Here's how to see the 1881 plot map:

Go to this site: http://wayne.ilgenweb.net/

Choose Platts (2)

Choose the 1881 map.

Then choose Leech (2). This is just the area below the fold in a large plat map and is roughly the southern half of Leech Township as of 1881.