The instructions in use in the 1840's called for a 33-foot half-chain. In my historical study project a major discrepancy could be resolved if the surveyor used a half chain and missed advancing his "out" counter once, thereby running 10 half-chains too far. He wouldn't have discovered the blunder if he used the short cut of stubbing in lines instead of traveling the full mile each direction.
I'm trying to place features relative to his measurements, but his survey was rejected by the office and re-done on a later contract, where the same features were not noted. Since he was cited for poor work on two contracts, anywhere it's hard to make sense of some things it is tempting to assume short cuts and blunders.
What worries me is that on line and at SHS meetings most link chains are full 66 ft. Is this because later instructions allowed the full chain and they became more common because they speeded up the work?
Did the 1840's surveyors usually follow instructions by using the half-chain?
Most of my work is in Illinois where they supposedly used a half chain. I just ignore the fact they used a half chain. They seemed to generally do things correctly. It’s always hard to tell because the accuracy was pretty poor by today’s standards. I generally figure the were accurate to about 1 in 100, sometimes better, sometimes worse.
Hey Bill. From the amount of views and the lack of responses, I would say that none of us knows the answer. Is this located in southern Iowa?
The attached image is from the 1851 manual. It does allow a full chain to be used when on uniform and level ground.
I have not looked into the "instructions" prior to 1851. But it might be the classic directed to do one thing but did another. I know there are stories that GLO used the old wagon wheel method for distances in the plains. I do not know if it is fact or just stories.
@monte-king I'll study your examples.
@dpuffett Hey Don - Good to see you around here. Still surveying?
I've been collecting the available information about where Chief Black Hawk was buried before his body was stolen. It was somewhere in sec 2 T70 R12 5 PM.
It's a useless pursuit, but I got interested when an archaeologist gave a tour of the Iowaville Cemetery and pointed out where the Ioway village was, where the settler village was, the Lockkeeper's house (they never built the lock), and where the GLO plat said Black Hawk was buried.
She said she had searched for evidence around there and the only thing she found was off quite a bit from there. I don't know just where.That got me interested.
There are some reasons to think the plat showed it 1/8 or 1/4 mile off. Where it was marked is interior to the section where the deputy surveyors didn't need to go, and later recollections don't match it.
That plat was from the 1843 Barrows survey that was rejected and redone in 1846 without showing the grave and other items of interest. The few features that should match up don't. There are ambiguities and discrepancies. This is one of two contracts where Barrows got in trouble. See Dodds book.
The distance from the township line to the river between 1 and 12, extended, is different between the two surveys by about 10 half-chains, so I'm wondering if he most likely used a half or full chain. I think he probably messed up his "out' counter and stopped too soon.
It could also be that he went too far north on 11-12, as the angle of the river would give that a similar effect.
The meanders are sloppy enough I'm not sure how to interpret the differences there. Maybe they will let me figure out if he was off count going north or east-west, but it isn't clear-cut.
As I said, useless but interesting.
Not useless at all if you can actually locate the site; there would be a lot of folks interested in that. I need to dig out my Dodds book one of these days, we just moved. Trying to match up with those possibly fraudulent surveys (or just amazingly incompetent) is quite a chore and may be impossible. It sounds like there needs to be another piece of evidence to resolve and it may not exist.
I haven’t done any surveying for quite awhile, still try to keep up with current happenings in the world of surveying when I can.
Good luck with your mission.
Here is a recent example of using GLO plats for property assumptions. I had a client in some distress come to the office almost 10 years ago. They had been informed that they were occupying the neighbor's land. Because the GIS shows their house, outbuildings, pasture well onto the neighbor's property. Reviewing the descriptions I became confused where this idea even came from. I was in the area and I took the descriptions out in the field and examined the area visually and finally the light bulb switched on. Incredibly, the GISers used the early 1900's era GLO original plat to place the river boundary and draw the property lines.
Here is the GLO plat blown up, the river in question runs between the 8 and 9 on the south line and the 9 and 5 of 34.95 in Lot 2. The GIS plotted it from this plat to place the boundary. Why? No answer was forthcoming.
Here's where the river actually is, there was about 60 acres missed for my clients after I was finished with the real boundary survey.
And no the river never shifted, it would take a younger dryas event, comet strike, ice age, something massive to move that channel.
How the river got plotted that far off? You might speculate forever, but I consider information like that on old GLO plats to be just that information for catalog purposes only.
I’m going by memory but I believe someone interviewed one of the original surveyors before he died. I don’t remember where he surveyed or when. He said they did call outs, like when crossing a creek or such by memory. A lot of potential for mistakes in other words.