In looking further into the provenance of two particular maps that represent the way in which the 18,000+ acres of the West end of Galveston Island were surveyed off into lots in 1837 by two surveyors working under contract with the Republic of Texas, one of the puzzling features of the problem has been the relative quality of the plat that appears to have been produced from the surveyors work in 1837.
The map :
It was clearly the work of an accomplished draftsman working with good materials and drafting tools, something of an anomoly for Texas at that date. There were only a handful of skilled draftsmen in Texas who could have produced it and it doesn't really fit the rest of their work stylistically.
But I think I've found a good lead in a public notice dated June 21, 1837 published by the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Smith, in the October 18, 1837 edition of Houston's "Telegraph and Texas Register". The note contains a reference to what I take to be the plan of the survey of the Galveston Island lots made by Trimble and Lindsey as follows:
"The public are hereby notified that the said [Galveston] island will be thus partitioned off in tiers, with suitable and convenient avenues for ingress and egress, leading across from the Bay to the Gulf shore, and sold accordingly" [...]
"A plan of the surveys will be exhibited in Banks' Arcade, City of New Orleans, as soon as the work can be completed."
To me, that means that the map in question may well have been drawn in New Orleans. The use of water color and attention to design seems consistent with the survey plans from New Orleans I've seen from that period. One of the surveyors, a Robert C. Trimble, resided in Louisiana before emigrating to Texas, so may have had some connection with the office of a surveyor or architect there capable of producing the map.
Can any Louisiana surveyors suggest archives of online plans of surveys from the period around 1837 that can be compared to the plan of Galveston?
Fool's errand
I have been following your button punching posts and I have refrained from comment except for one that I made.
If I saw a plat that you presented,I would have marked it as a paper or protracted survey. It does look very similar to plats made here in the 19th century
There is a famous one here don in 1834 for the town of Mandeville being developed by Bernard de Marigny who was a noted real estate developer, gambler and raconteur. Also your Austin surveyor Pilie was a known cohort of Marigny. Marigny has been attributed of bringing the game of craps to the New world hence from Johnny Crappaud which filters to toad.
18000 acres in a summer of 1837 with 2 pole chains. Gimme a break… Nice clean connected shoreline.
Extrapolated acres etc etc etc.
I would think that there were few original monument set. If any were set, they probably washed away at some pint or were buried after 1910 as you posted .
But if you insist to continue on your snipe hunt.
Try hnoc.org or nutria.org.
Call John McGill. He is the map maven among other things at HNOC (Historic New Orleans Collection).
I do have his book Charting Louisiana 500 years. Maybe I will look at it tomorrow.
Kind of reminds me of that guy selling lots in west Texas on ebay.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
> If I saw a plat that you presented,I would have marked it as a paper or protracted survey. It does look very similar to plats made here in the 19th century
Well, what you may not know is that there are multiple examples of the surveying of lots and the drafting of the plan for the sale being conceived as entirely separate exercises. A very similar project was undertaken in the vicinity of Austin in 1840 when thousands of acres of land owned by the Republic of Texas around the original City of Austin were subdivided into outlots by a surveyor named S.C. Wiltse under contract with the Republic of Texas.
There is ample evidence that the survey was made on the ground and that lines were run and corners marked. However, when it came time to advertise the plan of the subvision of the so-called government tract, the contract went to an entirely different party, a draftsman by the name of William Sandusky who had no participation in the survey but apparently worked entirely from sketches furnished him by the surveyor.
That is almost certainly what happened in the case of Trimble and Lindsey's survey of Galveston Island, but the question is who was the draftsman whose work the map is?
The map looks to me to have a New Orleans flair and I can think of nothing produced in Texas during that period that would be comparable. It ought to be possible to identify the creator of the plan.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
How many lots do you believe were surveyed on the ground in 1837?
When were the last original corners found?
These surveys must have been done by banshees.
Call and consult with John McGill of HNOC.
See if he could put you in touch with John E Walker who is the dean of New Orleans surveyors if he is still kicking.
Mr. Walker is/was very active with HNOC as a member after his retirement
There is another person who is retired from the Orleans Parish Notarial Archives. McGill would know how to contact her.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
Just as there was a LOT of New Orleans money for the Texas Revolution besides volunteers to fight.
I am sure that there was New Orleans money in this land deal.
After all, cotton was king as they said.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
> How many lots do you believe were surveyed on the ground in 1837?
> When were the last original corners found?
> These surveys must have been done by banshees.
Well, there is plenty of reason to think that a considerable amount of surveying was done on the ground. Several different lines of evidence point in that direction. Generally the modern trend among surveyors who cannot find footsteps of a survey is to assume that there was no survey, but this was a different time when surveyors actually ran lines and made corners.
When you have a compass, a chain, and a party of men in your employ, why do you need banshees? :>
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
> I am sure that there was New Orleans money in this land deal.
Well, the real purpose of the survey of the West part of Galveston Island was to raise funds for the Republic of Texas by selling lots. It's entirely possible that some folks from New Orleans bought lots thinking that they might move to a better climate.
> In looking further into the provenance of two particular maps that represent the way in which the 18,000+ acres of the West end of Galveston Island were surveyed off into lots in 1837 by two surveyors working under contract with the Republic of Texas, one of the puzzling features of the problem has been the relative quality of the plat that appears to have been produced from the surveyors work in 1837.
>
> The map :
>
>
>
> It was clearly the work of an accomplished draftsman working with good materials and drafting tools, something of an anomoly for Texas at that date. There were only a handful of skilled draftsmen in Texas who could have produced it and it doesn't really fit the rest of their work stylistically.
>
> But I think I've found a good lead in a public notice dated June 21, 1837 published by the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Smith, in the October 18, 1837 edition of Houston's "Telegraph and Texas Register". The note contains a reference to what I take to be the plan of the survey of the Galveston Island lots made by Trimble and Lindsey as follows:
>
> "The public are hereby notified that the said [Galveston] island will be thus partitioned off in tiers, with suitable and convenient avenues for ingress and egress, leading across from the Bay to the Gulf shore, and sold accordingly" [...]
>
> "A plan of the surveys will be exhibited in Banks' Arcade, City of New Orleans, as soon as the work can be completed."
>
>
>
> To me, that means that the map in question may well have been drawn in New Orleans. The use of water color and attention to design seems consistent with the survey plans from New Orleans I've seen from that period. One of the surveyors, a Robert C. Trimble, resided in Louisiana before emigrating to Texas, so may have had some connection with the office of a surveyor or architect there capable of producing the map.
>
> Can any Louisiana surveyors suggest archives of online plans of surveys from the period around 1837 that can be compared to the plan of Galveston?
Kent,
As a resident of Galveston, I have noticed that the map you referenced does not match the current layout of the island. If that helps any.
The current layout of the island supports your claim that the map was drawn without the map maker having the survey data, i.e. the map was drawn before it was subdivided.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
Maybe TX was trying to pay back some Louisiana sponsors.
I have read about large fund raising efforts among the common folk here at the time besides the deeper pocket contributors.
> As a resident of Galveston, I have noticed that the map you referenced does not match the current layout of the island. If that helps any.
>
> The current layout of the island supports your claim that the map was drawn without the map maker having the survey data, i.e. the map was drawn before it was subdivided.
There definitely has been some confusion and much of it can probably be explained fairly well. As you probably know, only a fraction of the lots laid out by Trimble and Lindsey's survey in 1837 were actually sold by the Republic of Texas. The unsold and unpatented remainder of the West end was covered by the patent issued to Hall and Jones that described the land from a survey by Thomas Borden that basically just traversed the meanders of the shore (with some short cuts, such as across what was then called Oyster Bay) and ran along the West line of the Menard grant. The lots that had already been sold were then, of course, excepted from the patent by simply listing them and referring both to Trimble and Lindsey's survey and to the "map drawn by Andrew J.F. Phelan".
Hall and Jones then proceeded to resubdivide a good bit of the 18,000+ acres they had been granted.
In the early part of the 20th century, the County Surveyor, R.M. Sias, ran a couple of baselines through the west part of the island and later county surveyors, including W. Tee Hawes, added their own ideas as to where the lines described in the original patents given by the Republic of Texas should be located. Even on a line as fundamental as the West line of the Menard grant, the resurvey location that E.M. Hartrick made in 1881 as City Engineer and Galveston County Surveyor and that was recognized for at least eighty years afterwards, appears to have been disregarded by more modern surveys as the description made a part of the 1986 District Court judgment in City of Galveston v. The State of Texas reflects.
The confusion isn't entirely difficult to understand when you take into account factors like the hurricanes, the grade raising, the large erosion of the shore along the bay and the gulf, and the industrial nature of land use. However, there are still cases where adjoining lands are claimed under the original patents issued by reference to Trimble and Lindsey's survey in 1837 and the question of where Trimble and Lindsey actually did run lines remains relevatnt for that reason.
Survey and Plan not unusual to have been separate
> Maybe TX was trying to pay back some Louisiana sponsors.
No, the reason for selling Galveston Island was as a quick money-raising scheme. The first part of that was to in effect sell the East end of the island to a character named Michael B. Menard and his Galveston City Company for $50,000. Menard's backers may have included some New Orleans folks, but as I understand it, most of the capital came from Mississippi.
>
> The confusion isn't entirely difficult to understand when you take into account factors like the hurricanes, the grade raising, the large erosion of the shore along the bay and the gulf, and the industrial nature of land use. However, there are still cases where adjoining lands are claimed under the original patents issued by reference to Trimble and Lindsey's survey in 1837 and the question of where Trimble and Lindsey actually did run lines remains relevatnt for that reason.
The surveys may be relevant to a discourse but in reality and for practical purposes
they should be considered a fairy tale.
Once upon a time..in 1837...two surveyors...assigned to survey a wee little Texas Island for a land deal scheme....and they lived happily ever after"
> The surveys may be relevant to a discourse but in reality and for practical purposes
> they should be considered a fairy tale.
LOL! In the case of two adjoining properties to which both owners trace title back to the Republic of Texas as common grantor, the description of the land by which title left that common source is always relevant in Texas. Where that description is on the ground is largely a question of evidence. Simply assuming that there is no evidence other than some survey made a few years ago is usually going to be an unhappy choice.
Likewise, where the State of Texas has issued patents by reference to a survey made a century ago, the real question, as far as the rights acquired from the State is concerned, is where that survey established lines and marked corners, not where some surveyor recently marked corners following some mistaken theory.
> The current layout of the island supports your claim that the map was drawn without the map maker having the survey data, i.e. the map was drawn before it was subdivided.
Incidentally, I would not claim that the above map was drawn without the survey data in hand. To the contrary, I think it has quite a numbe of features that are really only consistent with a survey having been made prior to the map. The large scale of the map (1 in. = 40 chains) and its unusually decorative design are what make it appear to be otherwise, but it was pretty much certainly produced after Trimble and Lindsey's work and with their data and sketches in hand. Their survey was in progress in July and August of 1837 and the first sale of lots was in November. There was plenty of time to draw the map after their work was complete.
Kent, do you have a client that is paying you to slueth out this mystery? If so, you are the %$%#@ Man! If you are doing it on your own out of curiosity, then you have an interesting hobby and are still the man.... but not like THE MAN!
