‘Much more than old books on a shelf’: DuPage recorder celebrates return of long-lost land records book

A piece of DuPage County history is back where it belongs after going missing for several decades.

Officials celebrated the discovery and return of Plat Book No. 2, which contains land records from 1868 to 1873, Friday morning at the DuPage County Recorder of Deeds office in Wheaton.

Plat books tell stories, Recorder of Deeds Liz Chaplin said.

“They are much more than old books on a shelf. They tell a story of how we became the county we are today,” Chaplin said.

A plat book is a type of atlas containing maps that show boundaries of land parcels. According to Rockford Map, a company that publishes plat maps and plat books, counties began developing plat books in the 1850s, and their use grew substantially in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Some maps may indicate who owns parcels. On one such page in Plat Book 2, there is a large parcel in downtown Wheaton labeled as belonging to the DuPage County Courthouse. The maps detail subdivisions, locations of roads and railroads, and more.

This book’s story

The book — about 2 feet by 2 feet — was found by Nancy and John Flannery of Wheaton, as Nancy Flannery was taking inventory of Wheaton Historic Preservation Council items stored in the basement of an annex at Wheaton’s city hall.

The book had been lent by former recorder Rick Carney to the council for an exhibit. Carney was recorder from 1984 to 2004.

Nancy Flannery was appointed by a DuPage County judge as a receiver in a legal case that the state attorney general filed against the council. She was going through thousands of items that had been stored at the annex building to inventory and document their provenance.

Nancy Flannery said John — “who can’t find things at home,” she quipped — came across it.

“We recognized right away that it was original, it was significant, and it needed to be preserved,” Nancy Flannery said.

“I knew this thing had to be rescued. It had to be taken out.”

Earlier this year, the judge granted permission to return it to the recorder’s office.

Chaplin and DuPage County Board member Dawn DeSart honored the Flannerys Friday. DeSart is a member of the DuPage County History Museum Foundation board.

“Some of the most important pieces of our history are found in (government) records,” DeSart said. “Plat books tell the story of how we grew and changed over the decades.”

More stuff MIA

The recorder has about 600 plat books documenting land in DuPage County. But, Chaplin said, the county is missing plat books 15 through 20, dating to the 19th century.

There are several legends about what may have happened to them, according to Chaplin.

One is that they fell off a carriage when a group of Wheaton residents took county records in Naperville during a middle-of-the-night raid. Naperville used to be the county seat until a referendum changed it to Wheaton. But Naperville residents disputed that and refused to turn over government records.

Chaplin said she’s also heard that the books may have been taken to Chicago and were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Or that a Chicago-based title company buried them in sand to protect them from the fire, and they were then lost.

Or maybe some long-ago resident took them, and they are forgotten in somebody’s attic or basement, she said.

If so, she would like to have them back.

“This plat book (No. 2) didn’t simply find its way back home. Someone recognized its importance,” Chaplin said.

ssarkauskas@dailyherald.com