A typical description provides township, range and section numbers and can be found on assessment rolls, in wills, or deeds and mortgages. Published maps of landowners began early, too, with large wall maps. These show who the neighbors were, the locations of churches, schools, lakes, cemeteries, railroads, transportation routes and other features. A researcher can determine where the ancestor went to buy supplies, record vital records, and pay taxes. Using maps of the same area over a period of time can reveal how the land was developed, and give hints for looking at land records.
Assessment records for taxes and road construction gain a new dimension when compared to such maps.
Check out your Minnesota county to see if an atlas for the county of your interest has been indexed. A.T. Andreas' Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota , published in 1874. Subscribers who purchased an atlas had their names included, along with the year they arrived in Minnesota and where they came from. Andreas' salesmen went back to each patron, and sold pictures, illustrations of farmsteads and businesses, and biographical sketches. The Andreas atlas can be a valuable research tool to find early Minnesotans.