Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
All I can do is hang my head in shame. I was driving home, my hour commute gives me time to clear my head, and it came to me, like a flash, like a vision, burnt across the sky. I understood what you meant about bearings always closing and at the same time realizing that I already knew that. It was one of those days when I couldn't see the forest through the trees.:-/
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
The original post was from what little memory I had working today. The acreage in the description is per deed.
That's an option we proposed early on. The owner of the farm wants nothing to do with it.
We really need to have a sit down with both parties and explain how solving this will benefit BOTH parties. The trick is getting them to the table.
Another Possible Explanation
I like it your holiness. Puts those two sides close to parallel. Hits a nice closure with explainable edits. I like your answer better than mine.
Another Possible Explanation
reading this post I was starting to get into it
so you saved me a lot of brain energy
and if there are no encroachments
or (parallel or 90 degree intents off of
or along adjoining or parent properties)
no physical evidence( sure you did not miss any corners)
Who the hell is gonna argue with you
since you have the only workable soultion
If you went to court a judge would try to
have someone work out a solution.
My initial take on this is that there was no surveyor involved with this property description.
At first glance I see acreage spelled out to 5 numerals past the decimal.
A wizard of buttons is involved and closure is not his intention nor his bother.
The description has been hacked and by that I mean it was done by a hack.
Ask for a signed and sealed survey before proceeding.
0.02
It wasn't a button pusher in 1957. Also the numbers not being parallel nor perpendicular suggests to me that these are measurements. Also I was critical of the area to five places also but I'm thinking it was an attempt at significant digits. Five digits in the distances too.probably not a surveyor. Maybe an engineer.
The data is probably authentic.
The description I've seen fails, only bearings and distances, more data needed.
The results are absurd.
Yet, in lieu of lack of evidence and a description that does not close, the boundaries can be set, maybe not relocated, set in order to correct the description.
0.02
Anyhow.
I'm just guessing but 150' x 142' will give you roughly a half acre and if you take off from that presumption:
Calls Given:
N 30°43'54" W 142.190
N 50°46'23" E 147.310
S 31°46'28" E 127.520
S 44°37'10" W 150.150
Closure Error Distance> 3.13761 Error Bearing> S 88°13'45" W
One Solution:
N 30°43'54" W 142.00
N 50°46'23" E 144.310
S 31°46'28" E 125.520
S 44°37'10" W 150.00
Closure Error Distance> 0.1612 Error Bearing> S 13°49'43" W
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
I'd say that what you're looking at appears to be the product of mathematical adjustment of a compass survey with distances taken to the nearest 0.1 ft. The fact that all of the internal angles hover around even 0°30' increments is highly suggestive of the compass having been used. Given the land use and the methods of the time, the precision of expression of courses and distances seems more likely to have been the result of arithmetic than measurement.
So, if this is the case, the reconstruction that seems the most likely is that the original compass traverse ran:
N30°44'W, 144.2 ft. (the "2" being probably a mistranscription of the original "4"),
N50°46'E, 147.4 ft.
S31°44'E, 127.5 ft.,
S44°46'W, 153.2 ft. (the "0" being probably a mistranscribed "3")
It miscloses by 0.35 ft., so you adjust that out to end up with bearings to seconds and distances to hundredths.
My guess is that the above compass bearings were produced by correcting magnetic bearings by some declination value with odd minutes in it. One sees this particularly in older rural surveys. The bearings look like bearings from transit angles, i.e. nearest minute, but the angles between courses are multiples of 0°15' and the bearings were actually compass bearings corrected by the declination at the time to produce the minutes fractions of the bearings. I suppose one could check to see what the declination in the vicinity was in 1957.
Anyway, I'd guess that the declination value to the nearest minute is what was used to rotate the compass bearings to some survey-looking basis.
The above compass traverse after Compass Rule adjustment and rotation would be:
N30°42'07"W, 144.16 ft.,
N50°47'10"E, 147.47 ft.,
S31°45'52"E, 127.53 ft.,
S44°44'40"W, 153.13 ft.,
which contains 0.4593 ac.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
And, so there is no doubt: if in local practice ca. 1957 it seems more reasonable that the courses and distances were the products of mathematical adjustment than measurement, then the relevant question is "What was the boundary traverse before adjustment?"
I'm thinking a compass survey was likely because of the values of the internal angles of the figure, so my first assumption would be that the adjusted traverse was expressed to a precision consistent with a compass survey, probably 0°30' or 0°15'.
All we know about the site is "north central Illinois". If it's anywhere around:
Latitude: 40° 40' N
Longitude: 89° 24' W
Then the USHD software gives a declination estimate of :
Year Declination
1957 3° 44.0' E
which does correspond pretty well with the minutes fractions of the bearings.
I think if the dignity of calls were slightly amended to a small extent, it might make my hypothesis wholly defensible i.e.
Senior Rights
Conjecture
Written Intent
Call for Natural Monuments
Call for Artificial Monuments
Supposition
Called Bearing or Angle
Gut Feeling
Distance
Coordinates
First Guess
Acreage
I'd definitely move gut feeling to number three or four.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
That all makes sense to me Kent.
Considering it was all calculated by hand, it seems strange that someone would go to that effort for a rural 1/2 acre tract. I'm not saying it's implausible, just seems strange. In our locale, the practical surveyors performing compass surveys of rural property in the 50's were not concerned with closures or declination. Most reported distances in varas and were generally a little more accurate than pacing. However, carrying the acreage to 5 decimal places showed some effort on this surveyor's part. If he did use compass rule, it would certainly suggest someone who knew surveying.
Regardless of which you take as most likely, all of the theories thus far suggest an on-the-ground survey made up of measurements (not fabrications) which would lead one to believe that there is (or was) something marking those corners to which those measurements were made. The effort in the math would also lead me to believe there was effort in the field in monumentation.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
Back when surveyors measured bearings on their compass, it made sense to report them. When they switched to measuring angles, why didn't they report what they measured?
I've seen a few subdivision plats that did use angles but they seem to be the exception.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
> Considering it was all calculated by hand, it seems strange that someone would go to that effort for a rural 1/2 acre tract. I'm not saying it's implausible, just seems strange. [...] However, carrying the acreage to 5 decimal places showed some effort on this surveyor's part. If he did use compass rule, it would certainly suggest someone who knew surveying.
Had it been surveyed with a transit, the typical adjustment to close would have been on just the closing course, not all four sides. That tells me that the quality of all four was somewhat in doubt, as would be true of a compass survey.
My guess would be that it was the work of an engineer practicing surveying. The engineers were typically more adept at pencil-whipping survey measurements than they were at actually making the measurements. Naturally, I wouldn't expect that either would be true in East Texas where most of the engineers probably went to the Agricultural & Mechanical College.
>
> Regardless of which you take as most likely, all of the theories thus far suggest an on-the-ground survey made up of measurements (not fabrications) which would lead one to believe that there is (or was) something marking those corners to which those measurements were made.
That would be my supposition as well. I would look particularly at the hypothesis that the bearings (including the bearing to the corner of the parent tract which is expressed as calculated cardinal components) are all nearly true bearings and search using the positions those led me to.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
> My guess would be that it was the work of an engineer practicing surveying. The engineers were typically more adept at pencil-whipping survey measurements than they were at actually making the measurements. Naturally, I wouldn't expect that either would be true in East Texas where most of the engineers probably went to the Agricultural & Mechanical College.
It wasn't engineers performing rural compass surveys in East Texas (at least not by the 50's). The engineers were doing pretty good work for oil field surveys and development by then (at least in our part of East Texas). The rural compass surveyors were tradesmen. This isn't to suggest that all rural surveyors were jake-leg surveyors, just the ones that were still trying to survey by compass in 1957.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
> My guess would be that it was the work of an engineer practicing surveying. The engineers were typically more adept at pencil-whipping survey measurements than they were at actually making the measurements. Naturally, I wouldn't expect that either would be true in East Texas where most of the engineers probably went to the Agricultural & Mechanical College.
With no disrespect meant to any surveyors or engineers, I have found this to be true around my neck of the woods also. Particularly in the '40s and '50s. A lot of the time (I am not saying always) a pristine plat with bearings to the second and distances to the hundredth might be a pretty paint job on a turd. I thinking it could indicate a lack of field work.
BTW - I never saw a chain (tape) with hundredths marks on the first foot of the smart end until I saw a Lufkin Hi-Way in the early seventies. Everything I remember from my early days (60s) were babbit chains with tenth-of-a-foot marks. I'm thinking a survey from the fifties with that kind of precision would be an exception. Somebody (engineer) piddling around with their hand-crank Monroe.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
Good perspectives. This is what makes surveying so interesting and what makes local knowledge very valuable.
There was a surveyor here that reported distances to the thousandth in the 60's and hundredth in the 30's. And somehow, he was actually very close. Closer than a lot of surveyors do with EDM.
Pencil-Whipped Compass Survey?
> BTW - I never saw a chain (tape) with hundredths marks on the first foot of the smart end until I saw a Lufkin Hi-Way in the early seventies. Everything I remember from my early days (60s) were babbit chains with tenth-of-a-foot marks. I'm thinking a survey from the fifties with that kind of precision would be an exception. Somebody (engineer) piddling around with their hand-crank Monroe.
I ought to mention that City surveying would be an entirely different matter. There is a long history in Austin of urban surveys having been made to relatively high standards. The earliest example of a subdivision plat with bearings expressed to the nearest arc-second I can recall seeing was one of a subdivision made in about 1905 or so. The plat was well calculated and well drafted, really a much better effort than what prevailed in Austin at the time.
It turned out that the survey of the subdivision had been made an engineer from Chicago who had apparently come down to town (or sent his assistants down) just for the purpose of lying out the subdivision. The quality of the work was remarkably good, particularly considering the technology of the day.
The City engineer's staff were taping with fairly good accuracy to the nearest 0.01 ft. in their work thoughout the City from about 1903 on.
The rural work is an entirely different matter. The farmers and ranchers generally didn't want to pay more than twenty-five cents for a survey and so different methods were used. The latest record of compass survey I've seen was probably made in about 1960.
