Variation of Needle per Deed

Kent I agree....or he was trying to tell us it was really 10°20' E....:)

> Kent I agree....or he was trying to tell us it was really 10°20' E....

The rest of the description appears to be the product of a competent surveyor, so my money would be on the unmathematical lawyer having introduced this oddity.

Very well said...:)

Maybe the attorney added the extra 50 minutes so he could bill for it 😉

> Maybe the attorney added the extra 50 minutes so he could bill for it.

Well, I'm willing to give the lawyer who drafted the deed credit for realizing that the variation at which the survey was run in 1890 was an important piece of information to preserve in the writing of the deed. A surveyor would probably be able to verify that 9°30'E was actually intended, so on the whole a net plus, and a nice bit of comic relief.

The attorney billed for the extra 50 minutes.

Or it could have meant to be 9°08'E
?

:coffee:

> Or it could have meant to be 9°08'E

The responsible surveyor was most likely a fellow named Otto Groos. I'll have to look at some of his other surveys from around 1890 to refresh my recollection, but I think that Mr. Groos usually expressed variation to the nearest 5 or 15 minutes.

Mr. McMillan,

I don't know if you have ever done any work in far north Texas but if anyone would know the answer to this question I'll bet you would...

In Grayson County, right up on the Red River, you have the cities of Sherman and Denison, Denison is about 15 miles north of Sherman. If you study a county map you will see that the original city blocks in the down town area of Sherman are aligned about 12 degrees west of north. In Denison, the original city blocks are about 2.5 degrees east of north.

I've had two old timers that practiced in Grayson County to tell me that what happened was the original railroad surveyor that laid out the railroad townships had a 12 degree error in his compass when he laid out Sherman. He didn't discover the error until after he had finished in Sherman. After the error was discovered he shipped his compass back to the manufacturer for correction and they shipped it back to him, still out of whack, this time with the needle pointing 2.5 degrees east of north. He used it to lay out downtown Denison in this condition... And supposedly, according to those two old surveyors, that is why those two townships are not aligned with magnetic north like everything else adjacent to them.

The original 1850's surveyor was named Munson and I think his practice was limited to about 3 of the Red River counties.

So have you ever, by any chance, heard of this? Or is it just a B.S. story told to an 18 year old (at the time of the telling) rear chain-man?

I graduated from High School in '80 and my daughter graduated in '08. We both have the metal numbers that can be reversed.

> In Grayson County, right up on the Red River, you have the cities of Sherman and Denison, Denison is about 15 miles north of Sherman. If you study a county map you will see that the original city blocks in the down town area of Sherman are aligned about 12 degrees west of north. In Denison, the original city blocks are about 2.5 degrees east of north.

If I were to bet, I'd put my money on the orientation of the city grid in Sherman having been chosen to approximately parallel a road or waterway through the town site. I gather it was laid out in 1848, so a railroad wouldn't account for the skew.

As for the skew of Denison, the town was founded on a railroad line, I take it, so most likely the town grid was determined by the line that the railroad surveyors had run in locating track. (I haven't cheated and looked at Terraserver to confirm that the town grid is parallel and square with the old M.K.& T.E line.

Edit: I took a look at the quad sheet and see that no railroad line really appears to have defined the town grid of Denison. I'd put my money on the surveyor having either run it parallel with some existing survey line or having simply used the wrong variation in orienting the grid. If it was laid out by railroad surveyors, that doesn't strike me as all that unlikely.

I agree with your assessment Mr. McMillan...

I wonder if those old surveyors that told me the original story were having fun at my expense or if they really believed those to be the facts? In my young and naive perspective at the time, I swallowed the story hook line and sinker.

To add credulity to their story the surveyor that they mentioned was named "Munson" and there is currently a prominent local family involved in petroleum and multiple legal practices by the same name. They were known to be descendants of the first pioneers that settled the area.

This interest's me enough now that if I get the spare time I might research it further.

What GLO records might give a hint about this? Would a railroad township itself be a stand alone headright survey?

> What GLO records might give a hint about this?

The place to start would be looking at the patent field notes for the survey within which each townsite is located. They ought to give you both the date of the original survey and the variation at which the survey was run. Knowing the approximate lat. and long. of those localities, you can compute a pretty good estimate of the actual declination or variation on the date of survey using the National Geophysical Data Center's US Historical Declination software that can be run on line.

> Would a railroad township itself be a stand alone headright survey?

Well, as a rule, a survey that was made by virtue of a scrip issued to a railroad company won't be a headright grant. Look at the GLO county map to see what the file number for the survey is. If it is a survey made under a scrip, the file number will begin with a three letter abbreviation for the land district and will follow with the letter "S".