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Fonds · 1802-1849

The Thomas Talbot fonds includes 45 large-format plans (registered 1802-1832; incorporating annotations dated 1810-1849) and a lease settlement register (created and maintained 1842-1846; includes retroactive entries dated 1825-1836) documenting land distribution in the town of London and the 30 townships in six counties throughout southwestern Ontario in which Talbot controlled land allocation. The plans show survey grids, clergy and school reserves, town sites (including London), First Nations villages, mill seats, footpaths, trails, waterways and crossings, local and regional roads. Most significantly, perhaps, the plans include personal land settlement information, with the names of grantees and dates of occupation penciled in by Talbot on individual lots.

A note on dating the maps: in many cases, Talbot treated them as working documents, adding, removing, overwriting and revising annotations, often over a period of several years, and, in a few instances, including information retroactive to the creation of the document. For example, item F 501-1-0-0-18 was registered in 1824, but incorporates annotations dated 1817-1840. 34 of the plans have been registered, and their registration dates have been adopted as a "date of creation". 10 plans bear no registration date, but do incorporate dated annotations: in the absence of other evidence, the earliest and latest dated annotations in these plans have been adopted as representing the plan's temporal scope. One plan (F 501-1-0-0-38) contains no dated data and has been assigned an estimated date based on internal evidence and comparison with related plans.

Talbot, Thomas, 1771-1853