I got back this afternoon to do a bit more work in the 1877 subdivision. The weather was nice and I'd have preferred to have put in a full day, but it wasn't in the cards. Had to spend the first half of the day working on a Surveyor's Report on another matter that is going to mediation, an easement rights dispute.
Here are some photos of the 3x6x_ piece of chalk limestone that I found this weekend marking a corner in an 1877-vintage subdivision. The evidence so far is that this set stone is an original mark placed by the 1877 surveyor.
Note, however, the alternative candidates that exist in the vicinity of the old stone, just waiting for some flagging.
Once you ignore the fence posts, you're left with two candidates, though, the 1877-vintage stone and a 1/2 in. rebar of probably very late 20th century origin.
Naturally, I was interested in the original mark. I did, however, decide to put training wheels on it by flagging up the stone and adding a tag that makes the situation a bit clearer. In addition to my professional identification and the point i.d. no., the 2 in. aluminum washer is stamped "FD STN, ORIG COR".
What a sweet find!
That Rebar Appears To Be On Line
Is it exactly 1' off to?
Personally the stone should have been replumbed over it's base. Then the rebar would be 0.5' off.
Paul in PA
That Rebar Appears To Be On Line
> Is it exactly 1' off to?
>
> Personally the stone should have been replumbed over it's base. Then the rebar would be 0.5' off.
My strong suspicion is that the rebar was set by calculation from other, more distant, corners. Most surveyors would be so thrilled to find the stone that they'd add a drill hole to it and use it as the corner.
As far as the stone being out of plumb: it's not really. The side toward the fence post was a little chipped, possibly from the post hole digger, and I allowed for the missing part of the 3 x 6 top when I placed the station mark.
Kent, did you ever find evidence of the stone mound around the monument called for in your earlier post?
That Rebar Appears To Be On Line
Is this the corner you were talking about digging under to see if the original mound was still intact?
That Rebar Appears To Be On Line
> Is this the corner you were talking about digging under to see if the original mound was still intact?
Yes, this is the one. I didn't have the time to do that yesterday.
> Kent, did you ever find evidence of the stone mound around the monument called for in your earlier post?
Paul, doing some more digging and probing around that stone for the remains of the mound is still on the to-do list. Yesterday, I was looking for another stone about 1600 ft. SW of the one in the photo.
Hold the phones boys!
Wait just one durn minute there. Your earlier post would indicate that you are showing this as the original corner. Yet this is contradictory to the fact that you've already stated that it is supposed to be a stone mound, and not a single stone. Then you go on to say that you didn't have time!?!?! to excavate to see if the stones were there.
Well, I think you may be slippin' a bit there old man. How can you call it original when you haven't searched for the mound. I mean, that may be acceptable practice over here in West Louisiana (East Texas) but by George, Central Texas Surveyors should be holding themselves to a higher standard in GPS heaven.
I'm just not so sure about you on this one.
TIC
🙂
Hold the phones boys!
Now that right there is funny.
Kent,
In setting the P.K with the washer, did you drill out the hole first to make sure you didn't break up the original stone? I get real worried about driving in p.k's in hard stone or concrete with out a pilot hole first.
Pablo
> In setting the P.K with the washer, did you drill out the hole first to make sure you didn't break up the original stone? I get real worried about driving in p.k's in hard stone or concrete with out a pilot hole first.
Pablo, yes, I drilled a 3/8" hole into the stone that the 3/8" nail fit snugly into. I thought about grouting it, but with some of the limestone dust in the hole, it was tight. In an ideal world, I'd have preferred just to have made a shallow drill hole in the stone, but I thought it would be better not to rely upon a survey party being able to recognize just a stone.
Hold the phones boys!
> Wait just one durn minute there. Your earlier post would indicate that you are showing this as the original corner. Yet this is contradictory to the fact that you've already stated that it is supposed to be a stone mound, and not a single stone.
Actually, the situation is an interesting case study. The corner in question is the angle corner on the East line of Lot 8 on the plat below. That corner is supposedly the SW corner of a 507 acre tract of land conveyed in late August of 1877 to an Albertina Steussy. That tract and a couple of others were conveyed out of the roughly 4,300 acre original land grant, and the remainder was subdivided into lots, including Lot 8, ranging in size from 77 acres to 211.4 acres according to a subdivision plat dated a month later, in late September, 1877.
The deed to Mrs. Steussy calls for a "stone mound" at the SW corner of her tract. An 1893 conveyance by which an adjoining lot in the subdivision was divided into two parts, however, recites the lot corners as being marked by a "planted white stone" and calls two of them "original lot corner". That's in 1893, sixteen years after the subdivision and twelve years after the road was opened that a couple of the planted white stones reportedly fell in.
It isn't clear who surveyed the lot in 1893, but the original subdivider, John E. Campbell, was still around and I'm pretty sure that the owner of the divided lot was a relative of his. So, I'd say better than 50/50 odds that he prepared the description for the 1893 deed or made the map upon which the description was based.
That suggests that in 1877, Mr. Cambell set pieces of chalk limestone to mark the lot corners in the subdivision. I would not have bet money on that until seeing the 1893 deed, finding the stone at that angle corner of a lot, and knowing that a fellow who did quite a bit of work for a landowner whose holdings extended into the 1877 subdivision regarded the stone that he reported in place in 1938, the same as in my photos above, as being an original corner.
Just as a general proposition, I'd be skeptical that Mr. Campbell, the 1877 surveyor set pieces of chalk limestone for corners. Ordinarily, I'd much rather bet that he collected cobbles from the prairie to build a mound and set a cedar stake in it to make it easy to find. The way that I propose to answer that one is just to examine some corners. If there are the remains of a stone mound and no chalk limestone, then that argues for the set stone above having been placed after 1877 to perpetuate the corner. On the other hand, if I find chalk limestone similar to the above at other corners that were never owned by the same person as subdivided the lot in 1893, then that argues strongly in favor of the chalk limestone in fact being the 1877 surveyor's mark.
We spent some time excavating one corner today, but all I found were some large cobbles, scattered, as if there had been a stone mound that was destroyed, probably by fence builders.
It's a service to the other survey crews who can't find a corner without a magnetic signature. Also relieves them of using their judgment to find the same center point.