What is the oldest monument you found set by a private surveyor working for a private development? For me we found numerous iron pipe set in 1911 for 20 acre tracts. The property is still 80% agriculture so the only disturbance would be by plows/tractors. We found 7 out of 12 and they fit reasonably well with the calls.
When you say "private development" would that include those old timers divvying up there old estates? We find numerous ridges, ditches, stone walls, etc that divided original lots into building lots, or farming, cranberries, and wood lots. I think that the oldest privately set monument would be from the early 1800's.
Dtp
When you say "private development" would that include the original owners of colonial patents hiring a surveyor to split off portion of the patent for their sons?
If that's the case, then I've found plenty of stones set prior to independence from England.
Many of ya'll will have me beat simply because the northeast was settled long before white man come to Texas. The first surveyors here were surveyors dividing up the lands for the grants to the railroads, so it was "private" sorta... not sure about the oldest... It's from 1882.
Monte,
Those are some wild outfits - did that crew just come from a shindig?
Warren Smith, post: 384077, member: 9900 wrote: Those are some wild outfits - did that crew just come from a shindig
That picture was taken in about 1984. I bet the guy with the vest still has those boots.
Lamon Miller, post: 384029, member: 553 wrote: What is the oldest monument you found set by a private surveyor working for a private development?
If "development" means a subdivision of an original grant for sale or partition between family members, probably about 1840 would be the oldest I can recall without breaking out the files. 1835 would be the date of the earliest survey monument I've recovered so far.
When I first made chief I was tasked with surveying the southwest portion of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia. This survey included a portion of the Virginia/North Carolina line a portion of the westerly line of the swamp.
All of us know about George Washington being deeply rooted in the surveying history of the colonies and in Virginia we have a lot of old tracts with records dating back to the 1700's. Some were burnt during the revolution but not all, on one deflection point of the line was a stone called out so we dug and dug and dug. When we found it I brushed the dirt from it to reveal an "X" with a drill hole in the center with G.W. etched on the edge. My I-man was very anxious to tie this stone down and leave for the day but I needed a minute to revel in the history that we had just recovered.
It was a long time ago and I dont remember the date buy it was definitely in my top ten favorite moments of surveying.
personally... don't know. but monte's picture reminds me of my office rat SIT days working on a new highway. couple, three patents had a bit of an issue at their common corner. at least two of them (maybe all three) referenced a wagon axle at that corner. boss wasn't super thrilled when i sent our buddies with a backhoe out to a cotton field that had been turned under who-knows-how-many-times since the 1840s. bout 4:30 in the afternoon i got a nice phone call. it was basically where i "wanted" it to be, bout 5-6 sub grade. boss was still irked about paying for the backhoe- guess in the grand scheme of a 40 mile highway blowing one line wasn't the biggest worry.
oops- technically not a common corner, but works for the sake of brevity here.
