Chapman’s Sectional Map of Wisconsin with the Most Recent Surveys

Pocket map showing the progress of settlement in Wisconsin.

This map of the surveyed portion of Wisconsin was issued by Silas Chapman about a decade after the state’s admission to the Union. Division of the former territory into counties and townships has reached the northern extremities of the sheet, and Chapman would create a follow-up for publication the same year that includes the borders of the entire state.

Railroads, both completed and proposed, are noted and the ambitious routes can be seen traveling off the map in several directions. Numerous Native American reservations are identified, and the absence of settlement in the northern portion of the state reflects its largely backwoods composition.

Chapman produced numerous important early maps of Midwestern states between about 1850 and 1870. His partners and successors, Dyer and Passmore, updated and re-published his maps into the 1880’s, and published this example as well. Lithographed by F. Mayer & Co. in New York.