Chatfield's Civic Geometry

Chatfield's Civic Geometry. . , In 1854, the site of the future town of Chatfield was surveyed and platted by Thomas B. Twiford, acting as the agent for a group of real estate speculators organized in 1853 as the Chatfield Land Company. The town plat covered 195.6 acres and the plat of survey was filed at the county recorder's office on August 28, 1854. Twiford's plat mirrored the checkerboard pattern of the rectangular survey, however the grid of streets, blocks and lots was oriented diagonally to the four cardinal directions in order to better conform to the city's topography. When Twiford filed his claim at the land office in Brownsville, Minnesota, he paid the federal government $156.48 (the minimum cost) for the townsite., Minnesota witnessed a frenzy of real estate speculation during the 1850s. Few pioneer era land ventures were more enticing than trading in town lots and Chatfield was one of over 700 towns in Minnesota that were laid out during the territorial period, which lasted from 1849 until 1858., , This beautiful color lithograph map of Chatfield appeared in A.T. Andreas' ILLUSTRATED HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA, published in Chicago in 1874. A native of Iowa, Alfred Theodore Andreas (1839-1900) founded his county map and atlas publishing business in 1867. His profusely illustrated "historical atlas" of Minnesota was an innovative concept and took over two years to produce. Andreas dispatched an army of canvassers to sign up several thousand subscribers at a minimum fee of $15, and many of the subscribers paid extra to have expertly rendered drawings of their homes and businesses included in the atlas. A milestone event in the history of American cartography, Andreas' atlas sold nearly 10,000 copies., The Land Ordinance of 1785 laid the foundation for the settlement of what is now southern Minnesota by establishing the Rectangular Survey. Under this system, before a region could be opened to settlement, a north-south line (called a "meridian") and an east-west line (the "base line") had to be laid out by government surveyors. Starting at the intersection of the meridian and the baseline, teams of surveyors employed by the General Land Office divided the public domain into townships of 6 miles square. Each township was then subdivided into 36 sections of one mile square by lines running due north and south, crossed by lines running east and west. The sections were designated by progressive numbers beginning at the northeast corner of the township (Section 1) and running westward and eastward alternatively, ending at the southeast corner (Section 36). The 640-acre sections were further subdivided into 40- and 80-acre tracts before they were offered for sale to the public at the district land office. The townships and sections were systematically numbered and because federal law required surveys and land sales to be completed township by township in order to solidify settlement, the rectangular survey shaped the broad pattern of settlement along an east-to-west axis. The minimum price per acre was $1.25. The township containing Chatfield (Township 105 North Range 11 West) was surveyed in 1853 and the first private land sales were recorded in 1854., , The Chatfield Land Company named their townsite in honor of Judge Andrew Gould Chatfield. Judge Chatfield was born in Morris, New York on June 27, 1810, the third of four children of Enos and Hanna (Starr) Chatfield. He practiced law and served in the New York state assembly before moving to Wisconsin in 1848. In 1853, he was appointed by President Franklin Pierce as an associate justice of the supreme court of Minnesota Territory, an office he held until 1857. In 1854, he was one of the founders of the town of Belle Plaine, Minnesota, where he practiced law and was elected district court judge. He died on October 5, 1875. A biographical sketch published in 1886 described him as "a judge of the finest purity of character, very careful, and very honest".