The Last Windmill

I spent some time today working on a report on the results of a survey investigation I made for the purpose of determining whether a particular road was one that was in use in 1917 at the time a large ranch was partitioned and was necessary and convenient for the enjoyment of one of the parts of the ranch.

This is a detail of a small part of the map of the much larger ranch showing a part of a 640 acre tract known as Survey 331. The dashed line is, of course, the road and the windmill symbols are labeled "New Well", in the case of the one on Survey 331 and "Big Windmill" in the case of the one on the 640 acre Survey 833. To the South of them was a third windmill symbol on the North side of a house symbol with the name of a former owner on it, the "Droomgoole place". The map was prepared in about 1914, at least several years before the date of the partition, however.

So how do you prove that this road that appears on this map that was evidently prepared in about 1914 was in use for access to the ranch in 1917 at the time of the partition?

Well there were several lines of evidence, but the one that tickled my fancy was one that appeared on the bill of the expenses the commissioners in partition submitted to the court. One task they had before them was to determine the value of the "New Well" on Survey 331. So how did they do that? One receipt was for the sum of $8.00 paid for "drawing pipe & rod in well of Section No. 331". That $8.00 bought a team, 2 hands, and 1 skilled hand.

The other receipt was for the sum of $7.00 paid for car rental two days later to a garage in a nearby town that advertised "Automobile repairing, horse shoeing, machine work, wheel wright and general repairing". The seven bucks paid for "2 trips to last windmill", presumably in a Ford car, since that is what the letterhead of the garage advertised.

So, it's pretty clear how the commissioners valued the well. They paid someone to pull the string of sucker rod from the well so that they could measure its length and get the depth of the well. Drillers generally charge by the foot, even today. But the receipt for the car? That was paid to a garage run by one of the commissioners in partition and is in his handwriting, so the description "2 trips to last windmill" is most likely his description.

Considering that there were exactly three windmills on all of the ranch, and the one on Section 331 was the "last" one, it isn't unreasonable to conclude that they drove to the windmill in Section 331 by a route that passed the two other windmills first.

In other words, the commissioner's own invoice indicates that the most convenient route from the nearest town to the part that included Survey 331 was the road sketched on the above map that passed two other windmills before it reached the last one at the "new well" on Survey 331.