# N05_E18 Great Lakes pilot: 1803 Freeman-survey map reproduction and reservation notation **Research date:** 2026-08-10 UTC **Sector:** `N05_E18` — canonical 24 × 24 grid cell, 37.5–45.0° N and 270–285° E (90–75° W) **Anchor:** Merrillville, Indiana, approximately 41.4828° N, 87.3327° W **Time band:** `1800-1950` industrial transition, with a 1803 survey and 1917 reproduction anchor **Status:** bounded archival reproduction crosswalk; no derived score and no `provisional_quadrant` ## Selected unresolved path The preceding survey/boundary/map crosswalk identified the National Archives catalog record for “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” surveyed in June 1803, but the original map image remained uninspected. This run follows the next search path by retrieving and visually inspecting an Internet Archive scan of a 1917 Fort Wayne history that reproduces the map and transcribes a reservation notation. The reproduction is a secondary source and is not treated as equivalent to the original National Archives map, the underlying War Department file, or the Indiana State Archives survey transcript. The run also preserves a source-level name discrepancy: the reproduced map caption and surrounding text identify **Thomas Freeman**, while a note later in the same volume refers to **James Freeman**. The discrepancy is not silently resolved. ## Spatial and evidence boundary The map concerns the Fort Wayne area around the confluence of the St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s rivers and the Maumee/Miami route. Fort Wayne is a regional and neighboring reference point within the broad `N05_E18` cell; the source does not provide a georeferenced polygon clipped to the fixed cell. No area, boundary length, reservation share, or route continuity is derived. ## Raw observations — inspected archival reproduction ### A. Reproduced map and page-level visual inspection - **Source:** B. J. Griswold, *The pictorial history of Fort Wayne, Indiana: a review of two centuries of occupation of the region about the head of the Maumee River*, vol. 1, 1917, Internet Archive item `pictorialhistory01gris`. - **Printed page:** 161, in the chapter section headed “The Fort in the Wilderness.” - **PDF page anchor:** page 171 of the downloaded 760-page PDF, accounting for front matter and unnumbered material. The rendered page was visually inspected rather than relying on OCR alone. - **Map caption:** “THE FIRST GOVERNMENT SURVEY OF THE REGION OF FORT WAYNE.” The caption and surrounding paragraph identify the map as made by **Thomas Freeman**, described as a government engineer, in June 1803. - **Visual map observations:** the reproduced map visibly includes a gridded or parcel-like plan with labels including `Indian creek`, `River St. Joseph`, `River St. Mary`, `Miami R.`, `Fort Wayne`, and roads or routes toward Detroit and Portage. These are observations from the reproduced image; the reproduction’s scale, orientation, line fidelity, and cartographic omissions are not independently calibrated here. - **Surrounding printed text:** the volume states that the map was found in War Department archives in 1915 and had lain there for 112 years. It calls the map the first government survey of the region around Wayne’s fort. This is the author’s historical account and provenance claim, not an independently inspected archival custody record. - **Evidence type:** visually inspected digitized secondary reproduction with adjacent printed transcription/context. - **Confidence:** high that these features and words appear in the inspected reproduction; medium for the historical account’s description of the original object and its custody; unresolved for whether the reproduction preserves the original map’s full extent, colors, annotations, or scale. ### B. Reproduced reservation notation - **Printed text adjacent to the map:** the volume transcribes a notation attributed to the map: “The black and shaded lines of the reservations have been run and marked. Posts have been set in the ground 100 perches apart, on the east and west lines, and numerically numbered, as appears on the plan. The tree nearest each post has been lettered U. S. and numbered with the number of the post near which it stands. … The mile square including Fort Wayne and the confluence of the Rivers St. Mary and St. Joseph is the Military Reservation.” - **Units:** `100 perches` is preserved in the source wording. No conversion to meters or area is made because the passage concerns a reproduced historical notation and the exact survey convention is not independently verified in this run. - **Interpretation boundary:** the passage reports a reservation-marking practice and a “mile square” description for a military reservation. It does not establish a modern polygon, legal status across later treaties, or the portion of the reservation inside `N05_E18`. - **Evidence type:** printed secondary transcription of a map notation, visually located next to the reproduced map; not a direct transcription from the original map by this researcher. - **Confidence:** high for the wording as printed in the 1917 volume; medium for fidelity to the original notation; unresolved for original map lettering, line placement, and legal implementation. ### C. Name discrepancy inside the same historical volume - **Printed page 161:** the caption and narrative identify the surveyor as **Thomas Freeman**. - **Printed note near chapter XV:** a later note states that “James Freeman,” described as an engineer sent by the War Department in 1803, surveyed the six-mile tract and the two-mile-square tract including the Little River end of the portage. The OCR and page layout preserve “James Freeman”; this run does not infer whether it is a typographical error, a different person, or a source-transmission problem. - **Comparison with current project evidence:** the 2022 Jandebeur article and the National Archives *Special List 19* entries used in the prior note identify **Thomas Freeman** for the Fort Wayne reservations map. The 1917 volume therefore adds corroborating reproduction evidence but also a material naming inconsistency that requires primary-source resolution. - **Evidence type:** internal source discrepancy plus cross-source comparison. - **Confidence:** high that the discrepancy exists in the cited volume; unresolved as historical identity. ## Source interpretation 1. The visually inspected reproduction strengthens the prior catalog-only path: it shows that a 1917 historical volume reproduced a Fort Wayne survey map with identifiable waterways, Fort Wayne, route labels, and a reservation-marking notation. 2. The printed notation supports a bounded historical observation about surveyed reservation lines, marked posts, and a one-mile-square military reservation at the St. Mary’s–St. Joseph’s confluence. It does not establish the legal or geographic extent of any modern reservation or treaty cession. 3. The reproduced map’s route and waterway labels are relevant to a historical connectivity hypothesis, but names and visual proximity are not evidence of continuous modern routes or hydrologic-network identity. 4. The Thomas/James Freeman discrepancy is itself a provenance and uncertainty finding. It should be resolved by inspecting the original National Archives map, the cited correspondence, and the Indiana State Archives transcript rather than by choosing the name that best fits the existing narrative. 5. Because the source is a 1917 reproduction, the map image is not a newly discovered primary object. Its value is page-level reproduction and context, not independent replacement of the primary record. ## Geography and variable crosswalk | Historical observation | Modern counterpart | Relation | Limitation | |---|---|---|---| | Reproduced Fort Wayne survey map with St. Mary’s, St. Joseph’s, Miami/Maumee route, and Indian Creek labels | Current fixed `N05_E18` geometry and USGS NLDI anchor | related, not equivalent | Regional map and point anchor do not supply a georeferenced cell-wide layer | | “Black and shaded lines” and posts at 100-perch intervals | Modern boundary or parcel layer | related, not equivalent | Historical marking convention is not a modern polygon or parcel dataset | | One-mile-square military reservation at the river confluence | Current municipal, cadastral, or protected-area geometry | related, not equivalent | Legal history, later boundary changes, and exact location remain unverified | | Detroit/Portage route labels | Modern transport or hydrologic network | not comparable without reconstruction | A reproduced map label does not prove route continuity | ## Derived layer No numerical sector score was derived. No reservation area, route length, hydrologic continuity, settlement density, infrastructure value, energy value, constraint score, adaptive-capacity indicator, or formula output was calculated. The bounded evidence-chain update is: ```text NARA catalog description + 1917 visually inspected map reproduction + printed reservation notation + current NLDI anchor -> stronger historical map evidence while original-map geometry, identity, and fixed-cell crosswalk remain unresolved ``` This is a provenance status result, not a measurement or model score. ## Model classification - `provisional_quadrant`: `unresolved` - **Reason:** the reproduced map is secondary; the original NARA map, cited survey transcript, and implementation records remain uninspected; the Thomas/James Freeman discrepancy is unresolved; no historical geometry has been georeferenced to `N05_E18`; and comparable pilot tables remain incomplete. - **Model boundary:** `provisional_quadrant` is a model output and is not an archival fact. ## Missingness and uncertainty - `primary_map_not_inspected`: the original National Archives Fort Wayne reservations map remains uninspected. - `survey_transcript_not_inspected`: the Indiana State Archives transcript cited by Jandebeur remains uninspected. - `secondary_reproduction`: the inspected image and notation are reproduced in a 1917 historical volume and may omit or alter original detail. - `freeman_identity_unresolved`: the same volume uses Thomas Freeman in the map caption and James Freeman in a later note; no identity resolution is attempted. - `scale_and_projection_unresolved`: no scale or georeferencing is derived from the reproduced page. - `fixed_cell_geometry_unresolved`: the Fort Wayne map is not transformed into a polygon or clipped to the canonical cell. - `implementation_history_unresolved`: the reproduction reports surveyed lines and posts but does not establish subsequent legal administration or boundary changes. - `period_match_uncertain`: 1803 and 1917 are dated anchors within the broad `1800-1950` band, not a continuous period record. - `not_applicable`: no score or quadrant formula was attempted. No archival silence, inaccessible primary object, ambiguous identity, or uncalibrated map feature has been converted into zero. ## Next search path 1. Retrieve and visually inspect the original NARA “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” using the catalog identifier/path recorded in the preceding crosswalk; compare title, surveyor name, scale, labels, linework, posts, and map extent against the 1917 reproduction. 2. Locate the Indiana State Archives transcript “Thomas Freeman’s Survey of the Boundary Line of the Vincennes Tract 1803” or a verified reproduction; compare handwriting, dates, names, bearings, and boundary descriptions. 3. Search the War Department correspondence and cited 1802–1804 instructions for an identity-resolving reference to Thomas Freeman and the six-mile/two-mile tracts. 4. Retrieve and inspect the relevant 1907 Allen County plat-book plates and preserve page/image provenance; do not infer treaty or reservation geometry from catalog metadata. 5. Only after primary-map and transcript inspection, build a georeferenced crosswalk between the Fort Wayne reservation, treaty clauses, historical routes, current NLDI features, and `N05_E18`. 6. Continue the separate modern baseline for cell-wide water, population, energy, infrastructure, and remediation variables. ## Provenance register | Evidence | Tier | Identifier / page or item scope | Date accessed | URL | |---|---|---|---|---| | 1917 Fort Wayne historical volume | C: digitized historical secondary source | Griswold, *The pictorial history of Fort Wayne*, vol. 1, printed p. 161; PDF p. 171; item `pictorialhistory01gris` | 2026-08-10 | | | Downloaded archival PDF | C: digitized historical secondary source | `pictorialhistory01gris.pdf`, 760 pages; rendered PDF p. 171 visually inspected | 2026-08-10 | | | Archive.org OCR derivative | C: locator/transcription aid | `pictorialhistory01gris_djvu.txt`; used for locating printed p. 161 and the later Freeman note; visual page checked for the principal map passage | 2026-08-10 | | | Original Fort Wayne reservations map catalog path | A: primary archival finding-aid description; image not inspected | NARA *Special List 19*, entry “A Map of the Reservations at Fort Wayne,” June 1803, Thomas Freeman / Charles de Krafft; scale and dimensions recorded in prior crosswalk | 2026-08-10 | | | Freeman survey reconstruction | B: scholarly institutional record | Jandebeur, *Indiana Magazine of History* 118 (2022), pp. 166–183; DOI `10.2979/indimagahist.118.3.01` | 2026-08-10 | | | Current hydrologic anchor | A: authoritative machine-readable API | `POINT(-87.3327 41.4828)`; COMID `3399712`; reach `04040001000480`; recorded in prior crosswalk | 2026-08-10 | | ## Bottom line This run visually inspects a 1917 Archive.org reproduction of the 1803 Fort Wayne survey map and records page-level map labels plus the reproduced reservation notation describing marked lines, 100-perch post spacing, and a one-mile-square military reservation at the St. Mary’s–St. Joseph’s confluence. It strengthens the historical evidence chain but remains secondary. The volume’s Thomas/James Freeman discrepancy is preserved as an unresolved provenance issue. The original NARA map, survey transcript, implementation history, exact geometry, fixed-cell crosswalk, cell-wide measures, derived scores, and `provisional_quadrant` remain unresolved.