I was thinking the other day about this and am wondering how the pioneers knew where to find their land or how they knew it wasn't already owned by someone else if they found some they liked. I know that the county was surveyed in 1810's. Were all quarter sections marked in some way? With the land office being in Quincy, it would seem that the first settlers would have had a very long wait for someone to come out and tell them if the property was available, and would assume that was after they went there. Were maps or plats available somewhere along the way, but with no roads how would they use them. When you consider this area was nothing but prairie and timber with few landmarks it must have been very frustrating, although I suppose they had vastly greater patience than we do today, but with most of them arriving in the fall it would seem they'd be in a hurry to put up a cabin and possibly start clearing timber for spring planting since the earliest settlers thought the prairie useless and almost impossible to till with the implements they had at that time. Just wondering. Todd in Maquon