W.D. Twichell was mapping out unsurveyed public school lands between senior railroad surveys that were either sparsely or not monumented at all in the Fall of 1901, working through Christmas and into 1902. Twichell was owed several thousand dollars (almost $80,000 in modern terms) by the State of Texas. At this point of the survey, he was running a traverse line along the proposed section lines as best he could determine. On January 2, he was working north on the west side of the Pecos River.
"Thence N at 1901 X4 St mnd one small ?? red rock mkd X. grass poor scrub cat claw. surface hilly soil rocky"
Not sure what the marks are in front of the word red. Kind of looks like 1/2? Sorry I can't provide a better copy.
Twichell would make pencil notes in the field and then usually would retype the notes onto the final form in the office. The pencil notes are shorthand metes and bounds and refer to the monument id (X4) in the field book. The pencil notes for Section 25 read:
Beginning at NE 24
Th N 1901
?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿW?ÿ ?ÿ"?ÿ ?ÿ to X5
?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿS at 461 x rav. at 1901 X4
?ÿ ?ÿ E 1901
Here are the typewritten Field Notes:
Here's what was found:
I believe I'll call this a match. Possible that someone has touched up the X a little, but the mound fits relative to other corners.
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looks like you found it, possibly it's 1/2, look at the 142 near the?ÿright edge of the picture, it looks like the possible 2 for the 1/2.
Is it the usual procedure to look at the field notes and?ÿgive them as much weight as the official typed office notes?
Is it the usual procedure to look at the field notes and?ÿgive them as much weight as the official typed office notes?
This is such a dicey area, I'll take any evidence that I can get. Especially when the traverse line is no longer concurrent with the section lines and all the monuments in the area are traverse points, not section corners.
I believe there is a vacancy on the west boundary of Block C-18 & C-19, but the GLO has not made that determination and fixing that is not something that the client wants to do at this time.
That 'X4' , and 'X5' isn't a shorthand for crossing the Lines of those sections ?
No, the x4 and x5 is his monument identification number. All the monuments listed in his field book that he set or found got a letter and number identifier. X1 to X9 and then started over again at Z1. I read forward a couple of days when he got to Z9 and he started over with 1A1.
He would reference the monument I.D. on his pencil notes (which I suspect were made each evening at camp) so he didn't have to re-write the description. Then, someone in the office would type up the final field notes from the pencil notes and the field book. The monuments are also notated on his sketch. On?ÿhttp://www.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/ZoomWork/9/984 6" target="true" rel="noopener"> http://www.glo.texas.gov/history/archives/map-store/zoomer.cfm?z=http://www.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/ZoomWork/9/9846 the line actually run is shown in red and if you look close, you can see the alpha-numeric I.D. that shows what monuments he set.?ÿ
"Error related to network status: 404 - Not Found"?ÿ First link busted.
Thanks, thought the 'x' was shorthand for crossing.
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edit: there really are 48 sections in a block, wow
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"Error related to network status: 404 - Not Found"?ÿ First link busted.
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Yeah, that's a site problem. I put that link in about 6 times and that was the best way to get it to work. You have to click the 2nd part of the link.
X4?ÿ X5, not a bad way to do it, as long as there is a chart or key to figure it out.
this is the usual chart for a township used to file corner records:
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I'm not sure how much exposure Twichell had to the PLSS system and whether it influenced his corner notation system, but his was definitely linear. The monument identifiers were definitely added later as they are superscript and a different pen color. The only key for the pencil notes or sketch is to have a copy of the field book in front of you.