[email protected] wrote:
> With all due respect to others' opinions, it seems to me that perhaps the
> names of the landowners that were included on Mill's Atlas maps were on the
> original surveys that were made by local surveyors....

Extracts From:
Mills Atlas of the State of South Carolina 1825
1980 Reprint Edition - Introduction by Gene Waddell
Published by the Southern Historical Press

"... Altogether, if two attributions are correct, twenty surveyors worked on the
twenty-eight district surveys.... 

While nearly all of the surviving surveys have a title, sometimes an embellished
one, only five have a cartouche.  Most are signed, but only four are dated. 
About a third have compass roses, legends, and scales (rarely elaborate
ones).... On all of the eighteen surviving surveys, the roads have been drawn
From actual measurement of the distances and angles.  Not all features were
surveyed, and many of the maps have only wavy lines for water courses.  Most
have little line quality, and when roads and waterways are depicted with single
lines of about the same thickness, neither stands out distinctly.  The majority
of the surveys have names written randomly in all directions and written in
script of irregular size.... A great deal of work remained for both Wilson and
Mills....

 ... he revised the district surveys and turned the work of twenty surveyors
into a uniform set of maps.  He completed his work in 1825 .... 

Since most of the district surveys survive, Mills's contribution can be
determined by comparing them to Wilson's Map and to the Atlas plates.... 

As an example of the kind of correction Mills made, the original Richland survey
has 'Dorteys old house' written twice near the center of the north side; the
prototype had the identical notations; but the easternmost of the two was struck
through and changed to 'Doughertys'; the Atlas version has 'Doughertys' in both
places. .... 

There can be little doubt that the engraving was not equal to the manuscripts
that the engraver worked from.  'H.S. Tanner & Assistants,' which appears on
most of the Atlas plates, might more appropriately have read 'H.S. Tanner's
Assistants.'  Where there are errors between the original surveys and the Atlas
plates, the engraver is more likely at fault than Mills, and this is
particularly evident in the misspelling of names which Mills as a South
Carolinian would have caught....

A fair example of the additions and corrections Mills made for all of the Atlas
plates is the revision of notations for the west side of the Pee Dee River in
Darlington District.  Starting at the south and reading north, the survey had
'Lowder's Lake,' but it was struck through and 'Island'; was written in....  The
Atlas has 'Lowder's Lake' and 'Williamson's Island.'  .... Mills added ten
notations, largely names of property owners who are not on the survey ....

Mills undoubtedly visited every part of the State to gather material for both
the Atlas and the 'Statistics.'  As in preparing the 'Statistics' he undoubtedly
relied upon local sources for part of his information, local sources that were
sometimes even more knowledgeable than the local surveyors....

Although the Atlas represents the labor of at least two dozen people over a
period of more than a decade, nevertheless, it is a major accomplishment of
Robert Mills.... he supplied information himself when it was missing, and he
corrected it when he could determine that it was deficient.... Most areas of the
State were not mapped more carefully for over a century, and innumerable
placenames have their present form because his plates made them standard.

Mills wrote in the preface of his 'Statistics', 'To advance the interests and
honor of his native state, has been with him always paramount.'  The Atlas is
only one of the many ways he proved the sincerity of this statement.....

Mills worked on the Atlas from about December, 1823, when the Legislature
authorized him to use the State-sponsored district surveys as the basis for his
maps, until about mid-1825, when he must have submitted the final versions in
time for them to be engraved, printed, bound, and sent back by January 1826.  He
thus worked approximately one and one-half years on the Atlas.  Since the
'Statistics' was copyrighted on 28 November, 1826, he had to have been working
on this volume of more than eight-hundred pages at the same time as the Atlas. 
He still had to sell the copies himself, and distribution probably occupied him
for at least two more years....

For information about his earlier and later careers, see Fiske Kimball's sketch
in the 'Dictionary of American Biography', Beatrice St. Julien Ravenel,
'Architects of Charleston' (Charleston, 1964), pp. 116-135, and H.M. Pierce
Gallagher, 'Robert Mills, Architect of the Washington Monument, 1781-1855' (New
York, 1935).

The dates on the Atlas plates are generally incorrect.  Since so few maps were
dated, the dates assigned were presumably based on someone's recollection or
were arbitrarily assigned by the engraver."

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