This matter that I've been working on this week is easily one of the stranger things that I've seen in Texas surveying. The General Land Office County map really doesn't do the situation justice.
Portion of Hays County GLO Map
The above is a detail of a map purporting to show the pattern of original land grants as compiled in the office from field notes returned by the District Surveyors and, later, County Surveyors and their Deputies. What it doesn't show is that the Amasa Turner Survey No. 1 is actually rotated 10° clockwise from the orientation in which it is plotted on the GLO map. The GLO plot was a quite reasonable effort. The Turner Survey, along with the Blackwell, Warren, and Dyer West of it and the Page, Rankin, Snedicor, Overland, and Gibbs Surveys North of it were all reported to have been surveyed in 1847 by Bartlett Sims, Deputy Surveyor of Travis District, at a variation of 10° East. So who would think that the Amasa Turner Survey was 10° out of whack in relation to other work apparently run by the same surveyor in the same year?
There is a fairly straight forward explanation for this. The main clues may be found in the field notes filed in 1847 for the Turner Survey which I've scanned and posted at the link below.
1847 Field Notes for the Amasa Turner Survey
Kent, when I read the one block there that said "Ransom Weed", I about spit my water out with the giggles. I sorry!!! :-$
Angel, you would probably really get a kick out of seeing the Fanny Bunn Survey in Shelby County, Texas. It is several miles West of the Goober Hill Community.
I used Birdie Bone's tombstone base as a benchmark. Figured it wasn't going to fly away.
> when I read the one block there that said "Ransom Weed" ...
Well, it's a good thing that I didn't post the part of the map NE of there showing the couple of thousand acres granted to a woman named Freelove Woody.
Odd names
My dad went to school with sisters named Fannie and Nellie Butt. There is also a Butt Hollow Road near Salem, VA.
We also have a Boner's Run and Boner's Run Road in Shawsville, VA.
Odd names
My sister married a Ryder, her father-in-law's first name is Richard...I guess he got tired of fighting it since he goes by "Dick Ryder".
Oh my!!! :-O You guys are all cracking me up this morning! ROFL!! :clap:
The Handwriting
The situation is that the field notes for the Amasa Turner Survey were written up in the hand of some person other than Bartlett Sims, who signed them as Deputy Surveyor of Travis District, certifying that he had made the survey upon the ground on February 2, 1847. The handwriting also differs from that of James R. Pace, the District Surveyor who examined them.
The actual directions of the lines of the Amasa Turner Survey as they have been recognized since 1847 are consistent with the Turner Survey having been run in 1847 at a variation of 0°00' East, not 10°00' East as stated on them. The surrounding surveys mentioned above and lying West and North of the Turner Survey were apparently run at 10°00'E.
This and other evidence strongly suggests that the Turner Survey was actually run by neither Sims nor Pace, but by some third person who I haven't yet identified. The Turner Survey is, as far as I know, the only original land grant in the entire county run with no variation set off in the compass. Bartlett Sims had been surveying since the Mexican colonial period, running all of his work at 10°E or 10°30'E, so it seems exceptionally unlikely that he somehow "forgot" what the proper variation was, but is more likely that the Turner was the work of some surveyor who arrived from other parts in 1847.
There was at least one incident in which surveyors working on the Blanco River (which runs through the Turner Survey) were killed by Indians. Unless I can identify the handwriting of the field notes, I'm going to hold open the possibility that the original 1847 surveyor might have been one of those who died, with Sims and Pace attempting to pick of the pieces of the unfinished work, so to speak.
Additional Reading......
......for Kent and others, although I suspect this would be a re-hash of things Kent already knows.
On my Maine trip, the reading material was S.G. Gwynne’s "Empire of the Summer Moon ", about the rise and decline of the Comanche Nation.
A small portion concerns John Coffey Hays, soldier and surveyor during the Mexican and post-Mexican years.
Although I have a feeling Kent and some of the Texas guys on here may already know more than the stories contained in the book, I recommend it to anyone not familiar with the Comanche Nation and their battles with the white settlers.
Additional Reading......
One of the standard early accounts of the battle between white Texas settlers and the Texas Indians over possession of the land was "Indian Depredations in Texas" by Josiah Wilbarger.
I looked for a copy of it on Google Books, but didn't find one for full viewing. The deaths of the surveyors on the Blanco River was probably described by Mr. Wilbarger inasmuch as he attempted to make a detailed inventory (while of course omitting any reciprocal violence committed by whites on the Indians).
Jack C. Hays, Texas surveyor, California developer
> A small portion concerns John Coffey Hays, soldier and surveyor during the Mexican and post-Mexican years.
Actually, John COFFEE Hays arrived in Texas in 1836 after the Declaration of Independence from Mexico. His surveying work was done after 1837 and he left for California in 1849, never to return.
Mr. Hays fell into military service with a Ranger company in the period between his arrival and the opening of the Texas General Land Office in 1837 as a way to make some money. Surveying prime lands on the Texas frontier in the 1830's and 1840's usually required fighting off the Texas Indians in possession of it if the surveyors were discovered, so the Ranger experience was a useful part of his resume.
One other odd feature of that GLO county map is that if you look at the Robert S. Rankin Survey lying North of the Benjamin Page Survey, you'll see that the draftsman indicates that the Rankin Survey was apparently in substantial conflict with the Eliza Snedicor Survey immediately to the North of it.
If true, that would be just as unusual as the Amasa Turner Survey being actually located on the ground in an orientation rotated 10° CW from cardinal. It would be amazing because the Rankin and Snedicor were both surveyed as a part of a single operation in April, 1847 by the same surveyor. Their field notes call for the NE corner of the Rankin and the SE corner of the Snedicor to be the same, giving the identical bearing tree calls and reciting the same bearing running West.
In other words, the supposed "conflict" between the Rankin and Snedicor Surveys didn't exist. It was an artifact of the drafting room at the GLO when the surveys North of the Amasa Turner were plotted up without realizing that the NW corner of the Turner Survey was about 470 varas North in latitude of the Turner's NE corner.
A sketch from 1886
Here, by the way, is a sketch that was prepared in 1886 purporting to show the correct orientation of the Amasa Turner Survey and its conflict (indicated by dashed lines) with the Page Survey to the North, also claimed to have been surveyed by Bartlett Sims in 1847, a few months after the Turner Survey.
This sketch was made in connection with a filing of corrected field notes for a survey that attempted to locate the remainder of land lying between the J.H. Davis Survey and the Rankin and Page Surveys.