So the work for tomorrow will amount to chasing ghosts. I'm working on tracking down the records of a fellow named Thomas Francis Jackson, who died in 1940 at age 74, but who was active as a land surveyor at least until age 72. In the early decades of the 20th century, he was county surveyor of a county about 200 miles northwest of Austin and later, he worked as a Licensed State Land Surveyor.
Mr. Jackson's work is potentially valuable in that it may explain how things got as screwed up as they did in one particular part of the county where he practiced. In that part of the county, all of the evidence I've found to date points to the original surveys having been run in 1847 with an excess in chaining averaging about 50 varas (about 139 ft.) per mile. However, sixty years later Mr. Jackson seems to have been mainly unaware of this, proceeding under the idea that the call for 1900 varas in the patent should be taken literally, despite the fact that Jackson himself had found about 50 varas excess per mile between various original corners he had identified from the original bearing trees.
Part of this is the state of the case law in Texas prior to the landmark boundary litigation in the 1920's dealing with excess and deficiency in a system of surveys. Part of it may also simply be lacking the larger view of the situation that GPS techniques and georeferenced aerial photography make possible quite easily and without huge labor.
At any rate, off I'll go to see if I can pick up even a scent of the trail of Mr. Jackson's records. Who knows? I called an abstract company in the next county and learned that they had the records of a surveyor, the legendary Felix Itz, former Runnels County Surveyor, who had continued working past the age of one hundred.
I'm curious, and I suppose this is the reason for your quest, but was every body using the same vara? I've heard stories about quite a few different standards for a vara in TX. If this is the case, I would think you would need to start by figuring what vara each was using. Maybe the second guy didn't take this into account?
> I'm curious, and I suppose this is the reason for your quest, but was every body using the same vara?
Yes, after the opening of the General Land Office in 1837, all county and deputy surveyors should have been reporting their measurements in a vara that was 33-1/3 inches long. On this particular survey, there were six different field parties at work. It is entirely conceivable that each was running a slightly different excess, however, it is also likely that various of them were camping together for security and so would have had ample opportunity to compare their length standards.
Considering how rapidly the work progressed, and the generally open nature of the land across which the surveys were run, I wouldn't rule out that lengths of rope were used in "chaining". A 50 vara length of rope would certainly be faster than a 10 vara chain, but would probably stretch more with use and wetting. A similar practice was used in Mexican colonial Texas and may have been carried over.
Hey Moe! Hey Larry! I'm tryin' to think but nothin's happening!
50-Vara Rope
One thing that I don't know, but am making an educated guess about is what sort of rope would have been available in Texas in 1847. I'm thinking that if you were equipping six survey parties with 50-vara units of measurement, you'd probably have to have them made and that would probably mean braided leather or rawhide.
You could render them a bit more water-proof by rubbing them with tallow, but I'll bet that even then they would still stretch over time, particularly if they'd gotten wet crossing a creek or in a rain shower.
Kent...when you mix up your Surveytini
be sure to use one of those strainer thingies when you pour it into the map (glass).
you want to keep odd notions such as allodial titles and ALTA standards out (the ice cubes).
The Surveytini
Yes, I wish I could drag Richard Schaut along so that he could go flag up the two corner posts at the fence corner that's more than 300 ft. away from where a surveyor marked the same corner in 1957. Now that's a Surveytini, shaken, definitely not stirred.
King Kong
King Kong comes from Africa and starts recording all fences in Texas as allodial boundary lines but Kent "Fay Ray" McMillan heroically tries to put King Kong in chains but King Kong falls in love with Kent "Fay Ray" McMillan and climbs the Empire State Building in downtown Austin soon the Texas Air Force comes and shoots King Kong but luckily the giant ape, who has fallen in love with the beautiful Kent "Fay Ray" McMillan, sets him down and falls to his death!
Old Fences
Actually, in this case, I'm interested to see whether Mr. Jackson's records reflect that he ran out the lines that were subsequently fenced, reportedly in about 1914 or so.
Naturally, all subsequent conveyances have described the land by reference to either the 1847 survey or to a 1957 resurvey, neither of which follow the fences. While the early date of construction of the fences may be impressive, the rest of the fact situation is from the real world, not a seminar or a magazine column. :>
Sources of vara chains and/or a vara standard
Have you done any research into sources of vara chains? Or a source for a standard accessable to the everyday surveyor?
As to sources, the Gurley company did not list vara chains in their catalog until the early 1870's - they are not in the 1870 but are listed in the 1874. Do you know of earlier sources that were manufactured in bulk?
As to a standard, TX being a big state, you could not expect all the county surveyors to go to the land office (in Austin, I presume) on a regular basis to calibrate their chains. Were there any regulations requiring each county to maintain a standard? Did distance discrepencies hold up across a county, but then vary to the next county?
And finally, FYI, I have a 10 vara and 20 vara chain in my collection. Both made by Gurley. In about 20 years of collecting those are the only 2 that I've seen to hit the market.
Sources of vara chains and/or a vara standard
Consider Mexican and Spanish colonial surveyors who would ostensibly have had their own manufacturers, sources and means not tied to the US/anglocentric makers that we are more familiar with in the earlier part of the 1800s- would be an interesting exercise to look at the landscape of who was supplying the tools and instruments back in the day.
Also, early surveyors often made or adapted some of their equipment, I'd think any reasonably intrepid individual could make a jig for making vara chain links - or potentially the early anglo surveying settler from back east fabricating a jig to correct his regular chain to varas, etc...
There's probably going to be a combination of things, where it comes to sources of vara chains used. Milton Denny's site talks about T.F. Randolph, Cincinnati OH making vara chains, he was active in the 2nd half of the 1800s, I wonder if there are other mentions...
Sources of vara chains and/or a vara standard
Yes, there were other makers of vara chains - I have several catalogs that list them. I chose Gurley for 2 reasons - 1.) they were the most prolific maker of surveying equipment in the second half of the 1800's, and 2.) their catalog was one of the earliest to actually list vara chains.
Sources of vara chains and/or a vara standard
> Have you done any research into sources of vara chains? Or a source for a standard accessable to the everyday surveyor?
>
> As to sources, the Gurley company did not list vara chains in their catalog until the early 1870's - they are not in the 1870 but are listed in the 1874. Do you know of earlier sources that were manufactured in bulk?
>
> As to a standard, TX being a big state, you could not expect all the county surveyors to go to the land office (in Austin, I presume) on a regular basis to calibrate their chains. Were there any regulations requiring each county to maintain a standard? Did distance discrepencies hold up across a county, but then vary to the next county?
It would be interesting to know who was making the vara chains in use in Texas in the 1830's and 40's. I'd suspect a company in Philadelphia or somewhere other than Texas since there were no instrument makers I'm aware of in Texas and compasses were widely used here, so there had to be a means of shipping them.
The braided rope or "cordel" was in use in colonial Texas. In the surveys I'm dealing with, work done under an approaching deadline, lines were being run at twelve miles or so per day, which to me indicates that speed was more important than great care and the distances measurement techniques may reflect that fact.
The other possibility is that the responsible surveyor just instructed his parties to throw in an extra 50 varas per mile. He was working as a Deputy Surveyor under a bond and may have wanted to make certain that none of the patentees would have cause for complaint that might draw upon his bond for satisfaction.
John Borden's instructions
Here is the text of the instruction that the first commissioner of the Texas General Land Office issued to County Surveyors (and their deputies) on the subject of length standards:
>Each surveyor will therefore regulate his chain to the length of ten varas or what is the same, 27 feet 9-1/3 inches, the vara being 33-1/3 inches.
John Borden's instructions
I always love instructions like that, but the question is - "What was the standard?" Today you could take the cheapest yardstick they give away at Lowes and be pretty darned close. That was not the case 170 years ago - especially when you were talking about the remote areas across the entire country (or Republic of TX as the case may be).
John Borden's instructions
> I always love instructions like that, but the question is - "What was the standard?" Today you could take the cheapest yardstick they give away at Lowes and be pretty darned close. That was not the case 170 years ago - especially when you were talking about the remote areas across the entire country (or Republic of TX as the case may be).
Well, the Texas surveyors weren't exactly making everything with animal bones. They bought compasses, paper, bound books, and drawing instruments from somewhere. New Orleans would have been well supplied with all, I suspect, and that was likely the distribution route from the manufacturers.
John Borden's instructions
That's all true, but calibrating a link chain is something that should be done on a regular basis. And I can assure you some surveyor in NW TX didn't go to Austin to check his chain. Yes, supplies & equipment would be ordered and shipped in, but routine maintenance is another story.
I know that in some states it was a requirement that a calibration chain be kept by the county and that local surveyors had to check their chain on a regular basis.
I'd love to have you at one of my workshops where I discuss chaining.
John Borden's instructions Kent
However, the Mexican definition for the vara was "3 geometrical feet". I've found that using 3 to multiply the vara by instead of .36 to divide by works better for retracing "some" Mexican grants in my home county.
Dave
The county surveyor in each county, by statute, was to set up a baseline where all chains could be calibrated and an observation line where each compass could be adjusted.
Whether or not it was done is up for grabs, but the intent was never to have to travel across Texas to see if your stuff was on or not. It was the county surveyors job.
Sources of vara chains and/or a vara standard
The concept that I have learned about how the early surveyor kept their chain standardized was that in their possession was to be a standard chain to compare all their other daily used chains with.
