If you happen to be researching ancestors on Prince Edward Island in or around the year 1880 (like me), then you've probably heard of the grandly titled Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Province of Prince Edward Island, published by J. H. Meacham & Co. in 1880. It's simply fabulous. I can't quite remember where or when I bought my copy (a 1995 reprint), but it was just after I realized I had some PEI heritage and, well, I love maps and I thought that surely it would come in handy somehow.
It turns out that this is more than just an atlas. The book begins with a "Historical Sketch" of the Island, its founding and history, its division into 67 lots (more on that later), and some lovely stories on everything from a cholera epidemic to Queen Victoria's accession, which I particularly like:
The 28th day of June, 1838, was a gay day in Charlottetown. It was the day on which Queen Victoria was crowned, and the event was celebrated with great enthusiasm in the little capital of the Island. The Island militia vied with the company of regular soldiers stationed at Charlottetown. On the morning of the auspicious day, the jail door was thrown open and all the imprisoned debtors set free. At night the town was brilliantly illuminated. This was the grandest demonstration and the gayest festival which Charlottetown had yet seen.*
Lovely, isn't it? Especially since I have a couple of ancestors that may have been there at the time (although hopefully none passed through the jail door that day).
But the point of the book is maps. Cadastral maps. Cadastral maps show the outlines of property boundaries. Sometimes they are labeled with the owner's name. They may also show land features, but usually only when they help show those property boundaries, like a river might. Here's a small-town example, from the Meacham PEI Atlas:
Town of Kensington, Lot 19.
As you can see, Meacham's Atlas also has some buildings drawn and labeled and each rural property has a tiny square that marks the location of a home.
Charlottetown Royalty
And the whole entire Island is in this book, each lot mapped separately. Squee!
A bit about those lots. It's an interesting bit of history, I think, since settlement is rarely so well organized. Briefly, it went like this: in the early eighteenth century St. John's Island, as it was then called, was settled by the French but was ceded to England in 1763 as part of the Treaty of Paris. When it was firmly an English possession (and those pesky French settlers had been run off) the British Government set about using it to extend trade, and that meant surveying the Island and seeing just what it was good for. A man named Samuel Holland was sent to do the job. He divided the Island into 67 more-or-less equal lots of about 20,000 acres, the plan being to grant them to feudal-like landlords.
Samuel Holland's Map of St. John's Island
Here's what Meachum says about what happened while Holland was surveying:
In the meantime the number of applicants for grants of land became so large that the Government had to resort to the expedient of the ballot-box in order, no doubt, to avoid, as far as possible, the labor of considering the claims of each applicant separately, and deciding in each case, according to merit. With the exception of a few small reservations...the whole Island was balloted away to favorites of the Crown, in August 1767.**
That bit about a lottery saving the trouble of fussing about with merit? Cracks me up. Oh, and why the name change? Well, there are a lot of things named St John's and Saint John and whatnot in the area. It was bloody well confusing.
Anyway, back to Meacham's Atlas. By 1880, the lots had been divided up and sold off and made into numerous properties, but those original boundaries were still used as a tidy way to know where something was. And so Meacham's Atlas is also divided up into lots, showing the individual properties with (lovely!) the names of their owners.
Another fabulous feature: throughout the book are beautiful (albeit stylized) drawings of homes, churches, storefronts, and government buildings. Occasionally, there are portraits to go along with them and, if you are really lucky, you might find an ancestor among them. So far, I am not so lucky.
I am happy, however, to even have a copy of this Atlas; I can't seem to find my edition for sale anymore. I did see some used copies (including some original editions) for sale online, for the right price, of course. There must be copies in libraries and it is worth searching out, if you have ancestors in this place at this time.
I'm now going to go put my copy in a very safe place.
*pg 6
**pg 4