Welcome to the Plat Map Index to the 1894 township plat maps for Sanilac County, Michigan.

The Atlas of Sanilac County Michigan compiled by E. R. Cookingham in 1894 is a very rich source of data for genealogists researching ancestors in Sanilac County. In each township every landowner's name is recorded on a map at the location of their property. The atlas is in effect a census record of the landowners of Sanilac County for the year 1894. The difficulty is that searching these maps for a name can be very time consuming. There is a Patrons' Directory with the atlas but it includes only a small percentage of all the landowners. It occurred to me that a more complete index would be very useful and not too difficult to create since the information is already well organized on the maps. Someone only needed to do it. I decided it should be me and the result is the index that follows.

A brief word of explanation is needed. The index covers only the township maps.  The village maps that are also in the book are not indexed.  Most of Sanilac County's 26 political townships consist of a single surveyed township. A few are made up of one full surveyed township and part of another. In these townships some section numbers are used twice. When this occurs the section from the partial township has a suffixed letter. For example, Delaware Township has two sections numbered 6. The one on the east is labeled 6E and the one on the west is just labeled 6.

There are over 8600 entries in the index and in any endeavor of this size errors are bound to occur. When illegibility due to penmanship, misspelling and imperfect copies is considered the chances of error become even greater. Even so, I took considerable care to minimize errors and I believe the index is basically accurate. When a letter or name was illegible I put a question mark (?) in its place.  If you notice any errors or would like to make suggestions please email me at fsbjab@msn.com .

I hope this index will assist you in your search for ancestors in Sanilac County.

Fred Buban

January, 2000