Found a map from 1857 that shows a county that doesn't exist anymore

I was digging through a box at an estate sale in rural Indiana last weekend and bought a map from 1857 for $10. When I got it home and looked closer, there was a whole county called 'Hurt County' that apparently got absorbed into a neighboring one after a court fight in the 1860s. The borders were drawn all weird too, like someone just guessed where the river actually ran. I spent an hour trying to find any trace of it on modern maps and came up empty. Has anyone else stumbled across a ghost county or town that just vanished from records?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannah38513d ago

Heard some guy on a history podcast talk about how maps from the 1800s are super unreliable cause surveyors were basically guessing half the time. Wild that a whole county just got erased like that.

charlesb4213d ago

surveyors were basically guessing" - my buddy actually got lost hiking using an 1850s map once.