Risking getting shot here with all the recent talk on M&B vs PLSS but I felt all of us could really learn something on how surveys are approached in different areas of the country/world. This is not a thread to bash which system of land division is better or ??I have it tougher than you? etc. Please lets keep it professional and restrict responses to your specific area of work.
The following are generalizations and are limited to my experience in one very small area of land in a metes and bounds (colonial) system (New York).
1. The ??Saratoga Patent? came out of the Crown on November 14, 1684 by letters patent from Governor Dongan (sic) at the yearly fee of 20 bushels of good winter wheat. The Indian claim having been settled in 1863 for 7 pieces of duffel, 2 half kegs of beer and 2 small casks of wine. On October 29, 1708 Queen Ann signed off. The first division was made in 1685 (no map or field notes found).
2. By 1769, there had been about ten divisions. I have not researched them all but of the ones I have, I was able to find maps and fields notes showing actual surveys run upon the ground. It is believed the lines were marked by the blazing of trees and the scribing of trees at the corners. No written or field evidence has been discovered by me to verify this. In later descriptions, reference is occasionally made to trees being found with old scribed lot numbers and markings on them
3. About a 1/3 of these original lots were owned by General Phillip Schuyler of revolutionary war fame. Phillip was the grandson or great grandson of one of the original patentees. Phillip lived locally and was New York States first ??Surveyor General?. He leased his vast holdings to private individuals for farming. Payment was made in the form of goods delivered to him each fall. Detailed records of such payments can be found in his ??rent book? These lease parcels were field surveyed with a semi-circumferentor and wayweiser or chain. All linear measurements were slope. I have never seen a map showing these lease parcels but descriptions today regularly reference being Farm x in Lot x of the x division of the Saratoga Patent.
4. In 32 years of surveying in this area, I have never found any ??original? field evidence of these surveys. I have found a few stumps large and old enough that they may have held original markings.
5. As these lease lots became developed in the late 1700??s and early 1800??s sod fences sprang up along some of the sidelines and it is assumed their location is based upon the original tree blazing that would have been visible at the time. Occasionally today, you can still find evidence of these sod fences with enough digging.
6. In about a 40 year span starting around the civil war, there was an explosion in the amount of land surveyed and subdivided in my area. Distances were still slope chained but the closures were better and most of the stonewalls and really old wire fences are assumed to have been placed on these lines shortly after thereafter. I have found a couple of these walls where construction was never finished for the entire length. Closer examination of these unfinished walls reveal ??line stones? at some interval of a chain or rod continuing to the corner. It is unknown if the surveyors set these ??line stones? or the farmers set them between the original blazed trees evident at the time. It also became more common to mark the corners with stones. On rare occasions I have deconstructed a few stonewall corners to examine the base stone for markings where I had written evidence of such.
7. Most descriptions of the larger farm parcels today, still recite the dimensions as determined in No. 3 or 6 above.
8. Barring evidence to the contrary and in general, the centerline of the stonewalls and ancient wire fences are mostly (not always) held for line today. Some surveyors hold every angle point, some hold angle points over a certain degree and some straight line it between corners. Each case is different and a diligent search of the records is warranted to answer these questions:
8a) Is the wall/fence called for or is the boundary line a straight line between corners;
8b) Due to deeds being handwritten and copied many times since the original description, many Scribner errors and omitted calls exist;
8c) Is the wall straight enough that it is representative of the typical accuracy achievable at the time of original survey? You must determine
the date of the original surveyed description.
8d) Junior/Senior rights.
9. At some point around 1900, linear measurements went from slope to horizontal.
10. It is not unusual to spend as much or more time performing research then field surveying. The two biggest problems you will have today is the ??just grab a fence and go because I priced this job so low? modern surveyor mentality and the bending of senior lines by not traversing out to the terminus of the senior line when determining a location part way along said line
Or as Mr. Wilson more elegantly stated it:
??No doubt a bigger problem is today??s surveyor retracing not only an original survey, but encountering past retracements that either made the wrong assumptions or did not take into account the allowances made by the first surveyor. This problem is widespread, resulting from incomplete retracements --- The only way to approach projects such as these is to work chronologically, determine the original survey work and creation of title(s), then following the resurveys and retracements one at a time, in order to conclude what is reliable and what is not.?
From; Forensic Procedures for Boundary and Title Investigation, Donald A. Wilson, LLS, PLS, RPF Page 192
Jim
Research time frequently exceeds field work time around here in rural surveys, as well. The history isn't as old, by far. But, every section corner is critical to four sections, so anything done in one may impact decisionmaking in the one in which you are focused. As there are a total of eight (or more) abutting sections to your section there is plenty of material to research when a section breakdown appears to be necessary. Adding to the confusion is the order of surveys that may lead to how your subject section was first created. For example, a Section 31 abutting the north side of a Standard Parallel will have had the south side surveyed by the contractor laying out the Standard Parallel. Some number of years later a different contractor established the location of the Range Line running up the west side of Section 31. In many cases a different surveyor yet may have been employed to lay out the sections internal to the Township containing your Section 31, so the east line and north line were established at that time. Three different potential chain lengths and degree of care taken with following the Special Instructions should be expected. Then you get to evaluate the work done, if any, by surveyors over the decades in your section and the abutting sections. The talents of the old scriveners can vary quite wildly, also. Jerry Penry's photos are indicative of the fun involved in digging up original stones currently located under road beds.
Cow,
very interesting, I had to sketch that out to visualize. Are the early records obtainable?
Jim
James Vianna, post: 442084, member: 120 wrote: many Scribner errors
That darn old Scribner couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. (Assuming you meant "scrivener's error".)
[USER=120]@James Vianna[/USER]
Generally speaking, the Government Field Notes are accessible. Every county in which I work has a handwritten version available to anyone who needs to look at it. We must realize that what we are seeing is a handwritten copy made by people who sat around day after day many decades ago making numerous copies the hard way. Errors may have occurred, but, it would be very rare to find someone who has ever attempted to get their own eyes on THE original field notes.
Over 20 years ago I made a trek to the State Historical Museum archives to take a look at the flat sheets holding one page each of the Notes for a county where I had a project at the time. The section containing the tract I was to survey had an Indian Boundary crossing it from east to west that pre-dated the township creation by a few decades. It also happened to be a Section 3 (north line is north line of a township) where the east line would normally total to something other than a perfect 80 chains. The lands north of the Indian Boundary had been surveyed roughly ten years prior to the lands on the south. The east boundary line closed on the Indian boundary something like 8 chains south of the northeast section corner. Everything was great except the locally available copy of the Field Notes had no measurement listed from the east quarter corner to the Indian Boundary monument that had been set something like ten years earlier. The word "chains" was written in the standard place but it was not preceded by a number in both the text of the Notes nor on the official Plat Map that accompanied the Notes. That is what led me to visit the archives. It turned out their sheet had no numbers either.
Here is a look at the PLSS in the Portland area. It is representative of western Oregon generally. The irregular shapes that interrupt the regular section pattern are Donation Land Claims - the land that was well settled and claimed before the sectional survey was performed in the early 1850's. The DLC lines are partly, but not all, cardinal directions. The county surveyor is charged with maintaining the cadaster, which he and his predecessors have done a fair to good job at. Survey of property within these urban areas rarely has the slightest thing to do with the PLSS or the DLCs, it's all plats and M&B.
The West half of San Joaquin County is comprised of part of the San Francisco Bay Delta. As such, it was patented by the State Surveyor General as discrete surveys of Swamp & Overflowed Lands. Upon application to the County Surveyor, a landowner who had built a levee and drained the inundated land would have the claim surveyed and sent to the State Capitol for approval. This is a screen shot of some of the resurveys of the original holdings.
Some of my predecessors were former GLO Deputy Surveyors who had subdivided Townships to the demarcation line for S & O lands, as well as the local Rancho boundaries. Once in office here, several of them continued the process on the basis of projected section lines, but in a sequential fashion. The red "squares" are nominally sections, but topography and State ownership of the navigable waterways prevented their use in the normal fashion. 
Mark Mayer, post: 442112, member: 424 wrote: Here is a look at the PLSS in the Portland area. It is representative of western Oregon
Mark,
I imagine every survey is different in relation to if you have to go to the outside of a section or the nearesr division thereof. Most of what you show looks highly developed and well established. In the example I gave in the op its almost a guarantee that you will be dealing with a patent line on at least one boundary. If you have a survey wholly within a section is it common or necessary to tie in a few outside section corners or just stick to the parcel?
Jim
An overview of the general section breakdown in the vicinity of a property I'm currently working on. Praise Jesus I was working north of the correction line and didn't have to deal with that mess below!
James Vianna, post: 442084, member: 120 wrote: Risking getting shot here with all the recent talk on M&B vs PLSS but I felt all of us could really learn something on how surveys are approached in different areas of the country/world. This is not a thread to bash which system of land division is better or ??I have it tougher than you? etc. Please lets keep it professional and restrict responses to your specific area of work.
The following are generalizations and are limited to my experience in one very small area of land in a metes and bounds (colonial) system (New York).
1. The ??Saratoga Patent? came out of the Crown on November 14, 1684 by letters patent from Governor Dongan (sic) at the yearly fee of 20 bushels of good winter wheat. The Indian claim having been settled in 1863 for 7 pieces of duffel, 2 half kegs of beer and 2 small casks of wine. On October 29, 1708 Queen Ann signed off. The first division was made in 1685 (no map or field notes found).
2. By 1769, there had been about ten divisions. I have not researched them all but of the ones I have, I was able to find maps and fields notes showing actual surveys run upon the ground. It is believed the lines were marked by the blazing of trees and the scribing of trees at the corners. No written or field evidence has been discovered by me to verify this. In later descriptions, reference is occasionally made to trees being found with old scribed lot numbers and markings on them
3. About a 1/3 of these original lots were owned by General Phillip Schuyler of revolutionary war fame. Phillip was the grandson or great grandson of one of the original patentees. Phillip lived locally and was New York States first ??Surveyor General?. He leased his vast holdings to private individuals for farming. Payment was made in the form of goods delivered to him each fall. Detailed records of such payments can be found in his ??rent book? These lease parcels were field surveyed with a semi-circumferentor and wayweiser or chain. All linear measurements were slope. I have never seen a map showing these lease parcels but descriptions today regularly reference being Farm x in Lot x of the x division of the Saratoga Patent.
4. In 32 years of surveying in this area, I have never found any ??original? field evidence of these surveys. I have found a few stumps large and old enough that they may have held original markings.
5. As these lease lots became developed in the late 1700??s and early 1800??s sod fences sprang up along some of the sidelines and it is assumed their location is based upon the original tree blazing that would have been visible at the time. Occasionally today, you can still find evidence of these sod fences with enough digging.
6. In about a 40 year span starting around the civil war, there was an explosion in the amount of land surveyed and subdivided in my area. Distances were still slope chained but the closures were better and most of the stonewalls and really old wire fences are assumed to have been placed on these lines shortly after thereafter. I have found a couple of these walls where construction was never finished for the entire length. Closer examination of these unfinished walls reveal ??line stones? at some interval of a chain or rod continuing to the corner. It is unknown if the surveyors set these ??line stones? or the farmers set them between the original blazed trees evident at the time. It also became more common to mark the corners with stones. On rare occasions I have deconstructed a few stonewall corners to examine the base stone for markings where I had written evidence of such.
7. Most descriptions of the larger farm parcels today, still recite the dimensions as determined in No. 3 or 6 above.
8. Barring evidence to the contrary and in general, the centerline of the stonewalls and ancient wire fences are mostly (not always) held for line today. Some surveyors hold every angle point, some hold angle points over a certain degree and some straight line it between corners. Each case is different and a diligent search of the records is warranted to answer these questions:
8a) Is the wall/fence called for or is the boundary line a straight line between corners;
8b) Due to deeds being handwritten and copied many times since the original description, many Scribner errors and omitted calls exist;
8c) Is the wall straight enough that it is representative of the typical accuracy achievable at the time of original survey? You must determine
the date of the original surveyed description.8d) Junior/Senior rights.
9. At some point around 1900, linear measurements went from slope to horizontal.
10. It is not unusual to spend as much or more time performing research then field surveying. The two biggest problems you will have today is the ??just grab a fence and go because I priced this job so low? modern surveyor mentality and the bending of senior lines by not traversing out to the terminus of the senior line when determining a location part way along said line
Or as Mr. Wilson more elegantly stated it:
??No doubt a bigger problem is today??s surveyor retracing not only an original survey, but encountering past retracements that either made the wrong assumptions or did not take into account the allowances made by the first surveyor. This problem is widespread, resulting from incomplete retracements --- The only way to approach projects such as these is to work chronologically, determine the original survey work and creation of title(s), then following the resurveys and retracements one at a time, in order to conclude what is reliable and what is not.?From; Forensic Procedures for Boundary and Title Investigation, Donald A. Wilson, LLS, PLS, RPF Page 192
Jim
I'm glad that it is YOU and NOT me, sounds like a real PITA.
Loyal
James Vianna, post: 442135, member: 120 wrote: is it common or necessary to tie in a few outside section corners or just stick to the parcel?
If the subject parcel isn't immediately adjacent to the DLC or section line there is rarely any reason to resort to it.
The situation in Oklahoma is quite different. There it is very common to calculate the descriptions in from the section corners, lines, or sectional breakdown, even in the platted urban areas.
[USER=11407]@Cameron Watson PLS[/USER]
The screwy sections are bad enough but what the heck is going on that makes me see double down the middle of the page?
I'm going to have to spend a little time looking into this. That s the Columbia River to the south. Section 54?
Holy Cow, post: 442172, member: 50 wrote: [USER=11407]@Cameron Watson PLS[/USER]
The screwy sections are bad enough but what the heck is going on that makes me see double down the middle of the page?
Probably a ?« Township (As in Range xx?« West/East)
Loyal
Mark Mayer, post: 442166, member: 424 wrote: or sectional breakdown, .
I have heard this term many times over the years but having never performed one really have no idea how much work is involved to do such. Can you give me an overview of the research and field work needed to do such,
Jim
James Vianna, post: 442205, member: 120 wrote: Can you give me an overview of the research and field work needed to do such
"Breaking out a section" merely means to recover and tie the section and 1/4 corners (including the center "1/4") . These are a half mile apart around the perimeter (except for that center 1/4) of the 1 mile square section, so potentially you could be recovering monuments a full mile from your subject site. Then there are the subdivisional aliquot corners that may exist. And then there are the circumstances where the monuments are not present and must therefore be restored in some way. Field work to break out a section can easily take a full day, and often several days.
Research is usually fairly straightforward. Nowadays you can go to the web and download the original GLO field notes. Of course field notes which document the placement of a pit and mound in a place which is now the CL/CL intersection of an arterial street have limited usefulness. In Oregon and Washington we have access to Survey Records of restorations and perpetuations, mostly on-line also. Most of the time research can be completed in a couple hours.
So it is rarely necessary to go to the record room in person. Note that the case in Oklahoma is different. You can get the GLO note on line there, of course. And certified corner records are also available from the privately operated "Hubtack" service if you have a subscription, which everyone does. But plats and deeds are in the county records and only a couple of the 99 counties have them on line. Hi ho, Hi ho.
Mark Mayer, post: 442214, member: 424 wrote: "Breaking out a section" merely means to recover and tie the section and 1/4 corners (including the center "1/4") . These are a half mile apart around the perimeter (except for that center 1/4) of the 1 mile square section, so potentially you could be recovering monuments a full mile from your subject site. Then there are the subdivisional aliquot corners that may exist. And then there are the circumstances where the monuments are not present and must therefore be restored in some way. Field work to break out a section can easily take a full day, and often several days.
Research is usually fairly straightforward. Nowadays you can go to the web and download the original GLO field notes. Of course field notes which document the placement of a pit and mound in a place which is now the CL/CL intersection of an arterial street have limited usefulness. In Oregon and Washington we have access to Survey Records of restorations and perpetuations, mostly on-line also. Most of the time research can be completed in a couple hours.
So it is rarely necessary to go to the record room in person. Note that the case in Oklahoma is different. You can get the GLO note on line there, of course. And certified corner records are also available from the privately operated "Hubtack" service if you have a subscription, which everyone does. But plats and deeds are in the county records and only a couple of the 99 counties have them on line. Hi ho, Hi ho.
One caveat ti the usefulness of notes..
Even where the monument and accessories are gone, the notes are a critical piece of the puzzle. They are especially valuable when figuring out conflicting evidence. Things that connect back to original corners will win that coin toss (and in fact eliminate the need for one).
Hmm, ok, well, I'm trying to approach this carefully, under my body armor and such... Yes, I am from Texas, so we do have our differences. I'll explain out what I can of the job I am working on this week/month. Customer called up, and says they think they have a vacancy in their land they are trying to sell. The buyer wants to clear up this piece of land before he buys. By vacancy I mean a piece of Unpatented Public School Land that was never properly surveyed out from the Republic or State of Texas and granted to a landowner, which happens by mis-survey, or by leaving a gap between railroad blocks, or by poor field notes and plats. (And yes, we have our own discussions here in the office, and we know what each other means, so I might use a wrong term here and there, but it is from habit). The owners knew of this vacancy due to there being a mineral deed having been issued in the early 1900's on this piece of State Land. The last survey they had done, found this mineral deed, so good for him for research, but then the surveyor ignored calls to survey lines, and went to the fences, taking in several acres from adjoinders that were under fence, so that will have to be addressed too. Back to the big problem. No one knows just exactly where this gap in the recorded surveys are. So we are hired to come out and figure out the mess. It starts with research. Lots of time putting together old deeds, patent records, Official copies of Field Notes, even canceled field notes, old judgements, and discussions with old-timers. After building a working sketch coming from all four directions, with possible places corners should be from all four directions, because they do not hit lines of occupation, we start looking for patterns of why they do or don't fit, and see if we can find reasons to apply magnitudes of error, such as a stretched chain, or a transit that was maybe off a couple of degrees. In this case, we found the vacancy to leave a gap that was the same size as a error in a senior survey to the north, where for some reason it fumbled over itself as it had a piece cut out. The problem is this makes the vacancy twice as large as it has ever been reported on any map previous. Our first trip to the field with this knowledge landed us 2 possible stone mounds, both in poor shape, but both the only pile of rocks anywhere in the area for over 300 yards. The search for a 3rd pile of rocks proved friutless, as it fell in the front yard of an old homesite. The 4th corner we hoped to find was in a pasture that had been cleared by a bulldozer many years ago. The dogleg portion of this vacancy we still question, as we are not certain how this part even came to exist.But, upon returning to the office, and placing what we did find in the computer, we got a call from the landowner, who had seen us in front of the old homesite. he stated he recalls cleaning up a pile of rocks there many years ago when he was younger and lived in the house. He was afraid of snakes making a den in the rocks. So far, it appears we have evidence of 3 surverys being laid out as excessive, one by about 10%, and then being ovelapped by a junior survey, which then had junior surveys placed from it's corners, and surveyed short to boot, leaving an even bigger gap before we get to the next senior survey, leaving a nice gap of Public School Land. Of course, being junior surveys, The Opinion of the Land Office may be to Adjust them to cover the gap, but we won't know that until we run the report to those guys. Same with fixing the senior junior overlap to the north. In this whole thing, we found not one witness tree, although we found several that other surveyors have claimed to be witness tress, but unless trees move, the tree at S18*E that is 22' away should not be closer than the tree that is at S 08*E at 11' away... Ok, now, if that's clear as mud, I'm sorry. If I tried to explain it better, Wendell would shoot me for having a post that took up half the internet (I'm long winded). But that's a general idea of the type of surveys we are tasked with.
Cameron,
Being a neophyte from the East, that map looks ugly, good luck
Loyal, post: 442180, member: 228 wrote: Probably a ?« Township (As in Range xx?« West/East)
Loyal
Yes, here are the records for both centers of Section 1.
