About 6 or 7 years ago a surveyor from southern Oregon showed a group of us an original circa 1850s GLO field book (I believe the GLO called them “tablets” or some such). They were from the deputy surveyor who ran the Willamette Meridian down into SW Oregon . For some reason they weren’t destroyed (it was GLO policy to burn the books after they were transcribed – whoever came up with that policy, even if it were Thomas Jefferson himself, should have their grave desecrated and their name added to the lexicon as a word synonymous with “dumb a$$”).
I wish I’d taken some photos of the book. If I recall correctly, it was leather bound and taller and skinnier than modern-day field books. Maybe 6 inches tall by 3 inches wide when closed. It had an interesting feature in that the leather binding extended beyond the pages and was tapered. When you closed it this extra tapered flap hanging from the back wrapped back around the front and slipped into a slot on the front to keep the book closed and the end of the pages protected from the weather. For being over 150 years old, it was in very good shape.
I only got to flip through the book but it appeared to have a lot of information, much more so than the info you will find in the official notes created from the book. The surveyor related a story about using the notes to find a problematic section corner. They found what looked like some of the original bearing trees– big old growth deciduous trees with healed-over blazes - but nothing added up as far as the bearings and distances to the corner as stated in the official (transcribed) notes. An examination of the original field book vs. the “official” transcribed notes showed that the transcriber had put the bearings and distances for a different corner in the official notes! They pulled the correct distances from the field book and found the remains of the original cedar stake. That kind of story haunts a fellow. How many other goof-ups or omissions were created by scriveners putting together the official record? Without the originals, we’ll never know.
If I ever run into this surveyor again (he has since retired) I’ll see if he has any photos of the books (I believe there were a couple). I think he was trying to negotiate with the owner of the books to sell or give them to the county. I’m not sure if that, or a scanning project, ever happened.
Have heard the burned story for years, Also have heard the the story is false and they are stored somewhere and never intended to be looked at again. Don't know, but our government destroying those kind of records seems unlikely. Hiding them and blocking a demand for them to be made available by using a destroyed story would not be untypical of a Federal Bureaucracy. If there were many errors made like the one above, it would be in the interest of those responsible to hide it. Be nice to have them turn up if they exist.
jud
About 15 years ago I was doing a boundary survey in a village here in Alaska and I found where the BLM had done a retracement survey that looked like it should have included some of the same monumentation that I would need to make decisions on my project. Knowing several BLM surveyors and noticing a friends name in the field notes for the survey, I thought great, the BLM will have some info on these monuments – at the least they can tell me if they existed at the time of their survey.
I called and talked to my friend and to my surprise he told me the BLM,s policy was to destroy all field survey notes and evidence once the plat was accepted as record. I asked him why all the extra valuable information was destroyed instead of retained for future and public use, he said that the BLM didn’t want private surveyors finding conflicts within the evidence that might question the official record.
>Be nice to have them turn up if they exist.
> jud
Indeed Jud. We are fortunate that in Deschutes County we have dozens of original field books and most of the calculation books of R.B. Gould's private business, plus about 30 or so of his county road survey books. He was a prolific surveyor in these parts from 1910 to 1940, when things really started rolling here, and the notes have proved invaluable as far as fleshing out his record plats. The original notes have help solved many problems which, without the notes, would have been incorrectly resolved.
Well the real story is; BLM does in fact destroy the original "tablets", which are the field books that are kept by the surveyor and the surveyor aids. The reason simply is that the field books may contain erroneous information that a chairman for instance, described what he thought was the corner monument. After all the information is learned and written in other "tablets" as well, the surveyor who is responsible for the correct information, made a decision on what and which corner monument was the real corner monument and that information is transcribed into the official field notes and signed by the surveyor and approved by the official with delegated authority to approve.
There have been court cases where there has been conflicting evidence submitted, from the chainman's "tablet" and from the official field note record signed by the surveyor.
Hence, the field assistant's "tablet" is destroyed after the official field notes become the official record and filed in the proper office.
It is not a conspiracy.
Keith
Interesting discussion..
Another strange practice by the GLO, when a contract survey was rejected and a new contract was let, the new contract treated the survey as if it was the first, no mention of previous monuments found nor did they remove the old monuments. They did destroy all the records of the rejected work but the monuments set during that survey remain along with their accessories. Dependent resurveys are also questionable about how dependent they were done.
jud
Hey Keith, are you or have you been connected to the BLM?
I wouldn’t think you would find many private surveyors that believed that the BLM has some conspiracy to harm other surveyors, I would think that you would find many surveyors including many of the ones employed by the BLM that wonder why all the publicly funded gathered evidence that could serve to perpetuate the position of federal and non-federal monuments is destroyed because of a policy to limit liability of the government. I also think that if a private company adopted this policy, that a judge would find it unfavorable during a case of property dispute.
One of the first GLO surveyors in Nebraska, Charles Manners, had to rerun the northern end of the First Guide Meridian East a couple of times due to the changing Missouri River and the fact that the 5th PM surveys had been done before the 6th PM surveys were done after the river change. A man from the Taylorville, IL, area had some of Manners' original field books. Supposedly they became part of a private company Manners started after he returned home. Then with each successive buyout over the next 150 years, the field books stayed with the next company. I recognized Manners' handwriting because I have copies of some of his personal correspondence letters. It was interesting to see the sloppy notes in these fieldbooks compared to the redrawn notes that many believe were the "originals".
>he said that the BLM didn’t want private surveyors finding conflicts within the evidence that might question the official record.
I’ve heard that also and it just seems plain stupid after creating another level for error – transcriptions of the notes - to then destroy the original foot prints (tablets), leaving the transcripts as the only record, good bad or indifferent.
Given what Keith said above, that the chainmen had their own “tablets”, I could see not needing to archive them, but the Deputy surveyor’s, the party chief’s, “tablet” is another matter. When I’m a grunt on the crew I keep a “peg book” in my vest to keep track of things I need to note or remember, but that isn’t the official project field book. The information from the project field book gets put into the survey narrative and elsewhere on the survey and is indexed and archived in the vault in case the recorded survey information has ambiguities or omissions.
Illinois is unique from what I've read in this thread. The original books are in Springfield Illinois in the State Archives. There is a gentlemen who worked there in the past, I'm not sure if he still works there or not, by the name of Dr Temple. You could call him and he would fax you pages of the notes if you told him what you needed.
Since then, I've learned that the town I live in is a State Archives, and they have microfilms of the books at the university that I can lay my hands on. The truth is, all the ones I have read don't really have any good stories or such in it, just the running notes.
I am unfamiliar with transcripts? All that the BLM here in Alaska will let the public look at are the public record - The official field notes for the survey which if you have ever done BLM work is nothing near to the information the field notes contain. They will give you paper copies of the public record or scans of – if you know somebody on the “inside”. I once saw a set of all the US Surveys in Alaska on cd. I asked if the public could purchase this as it would make many of our remote projects much easier as many areas getting information from the BLM records room may be days and a 1000 miles away. I was told that due to liabilities the public couldn’t have access to these public records on disk.
> Hey Keith, are you or have you been connected to the BLM?
> I wouldn’t think you would find many private surveyors that believed that the BLM has some conspiracy to harm other surveyors, I would think that you would find many surveyors including many of the ones employed by the BLM that wonder why all the publicly funded gathered evidence that could serve to perpetuate the position of federal and non-federal monuments is destroyed because of a policy to limit liability of the government. I also think that if a private company adopted this policy, that a judge would find it unfavorable during a case of property dispute.
AK,
Im sure Keith will be along to respond and give you his full Bio, but in Short, Yes he was connected to BLM for 31 years and retired at the top in 1992. We are lucky enough to have his insight here on the board now. As long as he stays away from P&R 😉 .
> that a judge would find it unfavorable during a case of property dispute.
When it comes down to it, it's not your field notes on trial it's your professional opinion. or in the BLM's case it's their authoritative opinion. How you got there via your notes is up to you.
I remember running a township line in Central Oregon years ago that had been rejected and rerun. If I remember correctly, the 2nd surveyor said he destroyed the original monuments, but I don't remember if he noted that he destroyed the BTs.
Lincoln County Surveyor has (or had) an original field book about 25-30 years ago in his display case. There was a margin notation of a BT that was not in the transcribed notes that changed the position of a BLM remonumented Forest Service corner during a corrective dependent survey by the BLM. It affected some of the work I had done for the FS in which we had accepted the BLM monuments without question. That particular corner didn't make a lot of difference as the BLM found and remonumented a number of other previously proportioned corners that affected my survey also.
Another story from the GLO field book
Here’s another interesting story the surveyor told about the notes. I’ll call the modern day surveyor “Smith” for convenience sake. The GLO deputy left a legacy of excellent work in that part of SW Orygun and Smith delved deep into his notes. In one portion, where they had to offset their running of the Willamette Meridian due to very rough country (maybe the Siskiyou mountains?), the deputy noted they climbed a promontory to scout out an offset line location and carved their initials in the rocks just below the summit. This surveyor has searched for the initials many times, but fears construction of a fire lookout in the early 1900s may have obliterated them.
Smith also contacted the Deputy’s great great grand daughter and invited her out to witness them cracking open a couple of old original oak bearing trees the Deputy had scribed. Both trees were confirmed bearing trees had been blown over in a wind storm and the landowner said they could open up the blaze scars before he sawed the trees up. Smith knew the scribing would be a good foot or more deep into the big trees and hoped to give the Deputy’s descendants the reverse scribe casting from the plugs they sawed out to expose the scribing.
They got the plugs out, but the blazed face didn’t have any visible scribing – just a rough and sort of battered looking surface. They were perplexed because the Deputy always left text book scribes.
The original field book had extensive notes about an encounter the crew had with Indians at this corner. Apparently the surveyors were almost run off, but came to some sign language accord with the Indians who left them alone to finish the work. It ended with a note that as they chained along to the next corner they looked back and saw the Indians returned to the corner and were examining their work. Smith’s theory is that after the deputy was gone the Indians took rocks or some other such objects to the scribes to remove the white man’s mysterious marks on the trees.
(I apologize for not remembering the GLO Deputy’s name. I think he was fairly renowned in the western part of the state and I can’t find my copy of “Chaining Or egon” to see if I can figure out who he was)
David,
I am sure you are talking about the official field note books?
Keith
akpls
Yes, I have 31 years with BLM and retired as the BLM Chief Land Surveyor GM-15.
Another story from the GLO field book
> (I apologize for not remembering the GLO Deputy’s name. I think he was fairly renowned in the western part of the state and I can’t find my copy of “Chaining Or egon” to see if I can figure out who he was)
James Freeman?
Another story from the GLO field book
Mike,
I think you may be a little confused about "original GLO field books". There were never any field books intended to be part of the official notes. There were field tablets used by the crews and were to ASSIST in compiling the official field notes. The field tablets were to be shredded or burned and never to be part of the official record, due to the fact that they were wrought with errors and scribblings that had nothing to do with the survey and many pages being of the random lines run off line. There are also journals kept by some of the field crew members that if you can find them have all kinds of information about the indians, "friendlies" in the area and homesteaders that fed them well. All in all the field tablets that I have reviewed would only add confusion to a area of confusion... especially when they were not indexed or reliable to which line actually run.
Pablo
Another story from the GLO field book
Jesse Applegate?