The digitized content of the Pope County Survey Plat Book consists of one volume of land survey records from Pope County, Illinois, and includes three hundred and seventy pages of entries covering almost every township from the 1830s to the 1880s.

Pope County was founded in 1816, from Gallatin and Johnson Counties and is the southeasternmost county in Illinois. The county was named after Nathaniel Pope, who served as the secretary of Illinois territory from 1809-1816, served as U.S. district judge for Illinois from 1819-1850, and whose efforts led to the statehood of Illinois 1818.

The digitized content contains one volume of three hundred and seventy pages with hand-drawn entries recording surveys of Pope County, Illinois, from the 1830s until the 1890s. Pages document surveying landmarks, such as oak, sycamore, or gum trees, and land ownership, including the names of owners and when they acquired particular sections. The collection may have been an official county record or belonged to a land survey company. The author of the volume may have been James Hanna (1821-1909), who served as county surveyor of Pope County, Illinois, during the nineteenth century.

The Illinois History and Lincoln Collections unit at the University of Illinois Library manages the physical items of the Pope County Survey Plat Book (MS 197). collection was completely digitized in 2022. For more information, contact an archivist at ihlc@library.illinois.edu.