Family Maps of Wayne County, Missouri

The library would like to thank the Butler County Genealogy Society on its latest donation, Family Maps of Wayne County, Missouri by Gregory A. Boyd, J.D.  This book contains 342 pages with a total of 86 maps.  This donation was made in memory of Betty Hanks and Amy Berry.  Ms. Hanks was a founding member of the Genealogy Society and anyone researching Butler County has probably seen her name listed on many of the society's projects such as the cemetery books and other transcribed records.

The following description of Family Maps of Wayne County, Missouri is from the website of the publisher, Arphax Publishing Co. They cover counties in several states with publications of this type but nothing for Butler County as of yet.

• Locating original landowners in maps has never been an easy task-until now. This volume in the Family Maps series contains newly created maps of original landowners (patent maps) in what is now Wayne County, Missouri, gleaned from the indexes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But it offers much more than that. For each township in the county, there are two additional maps accompanying the patent map: a road map and a map showing waterways, railroads, and both modern and many historical city-centers and cemeteries.
• Included are indexes to help you locate what you are looking for, whether you know a person's name, a last name, a place-name, or a cemetery. The combination of maps and indexes are designed to aid researchers of American history or genealogy to explore frontier neighborhoods, examine family migrations, locate hard-to-find cemeteries and towns, as well as locate land based on legal descriptions found in old documents or deeds.
• The patent-maps are essentially plat maps but instead of depicting owners for a particular year, these maps show original landowners, no matter when the transfer from the federal government was completed. Dates of patents typically begin near the time of statehood and run into the early 1900s.

Don't forget the Butler County Genealogy Society meets at 2 PM on the 4th Thursday of the month in the Snyder Activity Room at the Twin Towers.