Simon G. Elliott

Simon G. Elliott (1828–1897) was an American surveyor, cartographer, and railroad promoter. He is credited with creating two important maps surveying the locations of remains on the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields.

Life and career Simon Green Elliott was born in Pittsfield, New Hampshire on March 27, 1828. He was inspired by the Gold Rush to move to California in 1855. He began a career as a surveyor by 1856.

In 1863, he was appointed as the chief engineer of the California and Oregon Railroad Company. He was tasked with surveying a route for a track planned between Marysville, California and Portland, Oregon. After several months, however, he and his colleagues had run out of both time and funds. They quarrelled, and Elliott left the team to return south. He decided to travel east to present a claim to Congress and seek land grants and other aid for the project. He departed in late fall of 1863, and arrived in New York City on 18 January 1864. The increased detail for the latter map may be a result of the fact that, although the Battle of Antietam took place a year before Gettysburg, its dead were not interred in a permanent cemetery until 1864, after the publication of Elliott's map.

The maps were published by H.H. Lloyd, a New York publisher and bookseller, sometime in June 1864, and are known to have been sold at the 1864 Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, as well as by H.H. Lloyd at their premises in New York.