Ontario
Platted May 30. 1837
Published .
The plat of Ontario, as the county atlas of 1893 reproduces it, carries its own date. It is lettered in script under the scale, beneath the name of the village.
Platted May 30. 1837
Two of the four books that date the plat print that date somewhere. Both print a different one somewhere else.
The county history published in 1882 says Nathan Jenks laid the village out early in March, 1837. Ira Ford's history of 1920 says, in its chapter on Lima Township, in March, 1837, in a paragraph that follows the 1882 one point by point. The county's centennial history of 1928 says 1837, and gives no month.
The atlas itself gives a day. Its chronology of the county, four pages after the plat, has this under 1837.
Village of Ontario platted by Nathan Jenks, March 1.
That is more exact than any book before it or after it. Nothing on its page, and nothing anywhere else in the atlas, says where it came from. The atlas prints March 1 and May 30 for the same plat, four pages apart, and remarks on neither.
Ford does the same thing inside one volume. His Lima chapter says March. His list of the county's original village plats, eight chapters earlier, says this.
Was platted May 30, 1837, in the southwest quarter of section 33, township 38, range 10, by Nathan Jenks.
Neither place mentions the other.
So four books give the plat five dates between them: early in March, March, 1837, March 1, and May 30. The plat gives May 30.
The addition runs the same way, without running in the same direction. The sheet's title block dates it.
Add. May 31, 1844.
The 1882 history says In June, 1844. Ford's Lima chapter and the 1928 history say 1844. The books put the plat earlier than the date on the sheet, by two months or more, and the addition later than it.
They do not agree on the ground either. The 1882 history and Ford's list put the village in the southwest quarter of Section 33. The 1928 history puts it in the southeast quarter. Ford's Lima chapter says sections 32 and 33.
Where the books can be checked against the sheet on something other than a date, they hold. The 1882 history says the addition was ninety-five lots of the usual size, laid out between the original town and the river. On the atlas sheet the lots of Jenks's addition lie between Canal Street and the river, and they are numbered from 1 to 95.
The county recorder's plat book would settle both dates. It has not been read for this.
Sources
- Counties of LaGrange and Noble, Indiana: Historical and Biographical. The Lima Township chapter, F. A. Battey and Company, 1882. Internet Archive. Printed page 145 of the LaGrange County half, scan leaf 147, for the plat early in March 1837, the southwest quarter of Section 33, and the addition of June 1844 with its ninety-five lots.
- History of Northeast Indiana: LaGrange, Steuben, Noble and DeKalb Counties, Ira Ford, 1920. Internet Archive, volume 1. Chapter XXV, Lima Township, printed page 153, leaf 193, for March 1837, the addition in 1844, and sections 32 and 33. Chapter XVII, the list of original village plats, printed page 111, leaf 151, for May 30, 1837. The Lima chapter follows the 1882 account and is not a second source for it.
- LaGrange County Centennial History, 1828-1928, John W. Hanan, compiler. Lima Township by J. C. DeVinney, 1928. Indiana Historical Society. Chapter 30, Lima Township, printed page 85, for 1837, the southeast quarter of section 33, and the addition of 1844. Quoted as text; no image from this copy is used.
- Illustrated Atlas and Columbian Souvenir of LaGrange County, Indiana, 1893. Internet Archive. The Ontario plat sheet, atlas page 49, IIIF leaf 53, for the title block and the numbering of the addition's lots; the chronology of the county, atlas page 53, IIIF leaf 57, for March 1.
Every quotation and date here was read off the page images of the four volumes, and none comes from a scanned text layer. The statement that the atlas says nowhere where its chronology came from rests on a search of the atlas's scanned text as well as the two pages read. The 1920 history's Lima chapter follows the 1882 one on Ontario, so on that chapter's dates they are one source, not two.
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