You lost me.
Once you have the average depths, the average of the adjacent averages will yield the best estimate of the original lot line length. It's all ghost math anyway, since the current shore is the current line right?
> > Area divided by width will give you the average depth of each lot. A linear regression should put you onto a pretty good guess.
>
> Except the lot areas were plainly calculated from exact measurements, so the point of the exercise would be to calculate those actual measurements that yield the stated acreages. When you consider that some dimensions would be unlikely to have been measured with a 2-pole chain and that the shore has a particular shape, that would mean a different button would be the one to press. :>
No, this exercise would be to locate the West lines of the lots, prorate the corners in, turn a 90 and run to the 18.6 year line and call it a day.
> Once you have the average depths, the average of the adjacent averages will yield the best estimate of the original lot line length.
I think that if you work the numbers, you'll see the problem with that approach. It's understood, I'd think, that the side line dimensions need to be plausible as measurements using the methods of the day.
> No, this exercise would be to locate the West lines of the lots, prorate the corners in, turn a 90 and run to the 18.6 year line and call it a day.
However, where the line of MHW or MHHW is today tells you nothing about where the shoreline was in 1837, which was the point of the exercise.
You mentioned a seawall. Could a man made improvement such as a seawall constitute an unnatural avulsion event affecting the natural erosion/accretion of the MHW line, potentially fixing the meander line at the time of the sea walls construction, assuming that the lots have riparian rights?
Just curious.
Best Regards. Willy 😉
You may have to beat me with the dumb stick, I'm still lost. Are you saying that the dimensions have to be to the nearest chain or rod or link? After all the calcs are done you can round the results to whatever you deem appropriate.
At your suggestion, I ran some of the numbers;
Lot Area avg. depth side lot length
1 10.5 21
21.52
20 11.02 22.04
22.6
21 11.58 23.16
23.62
40 12.04 24.08
24.59
41 12.55 25.1
25.61
59 13.06 26.12
26.66
60 13.6 27.2
27.7
75 14.1 28.2
28.7
76 14.6 29.2
29.7
89 15.1 30.2
30.75
90 15.65 31.3
31.9
101 16.25 32.5
32.9
102 16.65 33.3
33.8
113 17.15 34.3
34.85
114 17.7 35.4
35.9
125 18.2 36.4
36.9
126 18.7 37.4
37.95
139 19.25 38.5
39.05
140 19.8 39.6
The spacing went awry, but you should get the gist of it. This was done in excel.
> At your suggestion, I ran some of the numbers;
Yes, and those show the problem. The sideline lengths don't give the actual lot areas noted on the plat, so they are quite unlikely to be the original measurements.
> You may have to beat me with the dumb stick, I'm still lost. Are you saying that the dimensions have to be to the nearest chain or rod or link? After all the calcs are done you can round the results to whatever you deem appropriate.
Well, put yourself in the boots of the 1837 surveyors. They are measuring distances from their stairstep traverse along the shore, probably back from the wet beach, but near enough to the shore that sightlines aren't a problem. They would not have set stakes at the line of mean high water since there would have been a good chance that they would have washed out. So, if the stakes are set back, do you measure to the nearest 0.01 chain to some point on the shoreline or do you use some other method?
Look, for example, at the Lots 152, 166, 167, 183 ... whose contents are expressed to the nearest 0.5 acre. What would one logically conclude about the precision of the sideline lengths from which those areas were calculated?
> > At your suggestion, I ran some of the numbers;
>
> Yes, and those show the problem. The sideline lengths don't give the actual lot areas noted on the plat, so they are quite unlikely to be the original measurements.
what!:'(
If the numbers I calculated are derived from the areas, how can they not produce the same areas? Average the calculated side lot dimensions and you get back to the average lot depth that they are based on. I am assuming the surveyor reported to the nearest tenth of a chain, at best.
Are you trying to make some point that whizzed over my head?
I would presume that those side lot lines were measured with the same care and precision as any other lot line.
I would also presume the calculations of the areas were reported to the best ability of the draughtsman, and that is where the precision failed. There is no reason to doubt the field survey methods based on numbers and apparent precision on the plat.
> > No, this exercise would be to locate the West lines of the lots, prorate the corners in, turn a 90 and run to the 18.6 year line and call it a day.
>
> However, where the line of MHW or MHHW is today tells you nothing about where the shoreline was in 1837, which was the point of the exercise.
That would be irrelevant due to the fact that it's a littoral boundary, which is probably why they weren't dimensioned in the first place. That and, as you eluded to, it's probably 8 vertical feet lower than the West side of the lots due to the seawall and "public beach" now.
> I would presume that those side lot lines were measured with the same care and precision as any other lot line.
>
> I would also presume the calculations of the areas were reported to the best ability of the draughtsman, and that is where the precision failed. There is no reason to doubt the field survey methods based on numbers and apparent precision on the plat.
Well, that certainly would be one point of view, but I think there are better, more obvious explanations. For example, look at Lots 152, 166, 167, 182, 183, 198, 199 ... Is it reasonable to conclude that those lot acreages were calculated from distances other than distances taken to the nearest 2 poles?
The nature of the gulfward measurement was to a shore and was quite unlikely to have been to any exact feature on the shore. So would it make sense that a measurement to a smudge in the sand was measured to the nearest link? If not, what other methods seem more likely?
> That would be irrelevant due to the fact that it's a littoral boundary, which is probably why they weren't dimensioned in the first place.
Actually, the map was compiled at a scale of 1 in. = 40 chains. None of the lots are dimensioned on it. So, if anyone asked you if you could calculate where the shore of Galveston Island was in 1837 based upon that map of the 1837 survey, you'd tell them that there's no way you could ever figure that one out because the line has moved by hundreds of feet inland? :>
> That would be irrelevant due to the fact that it's a littoral boundary, which is probably why they weren't dimensioned in the first place.
The problem is hardly inconsequential in that there are early conveyances of parcels out of the original lots that tied to the shoreline as it then existed or to a marker on that shoreline that has long ago washed into the Gulf of Mexico or Galveston Bay, and without any tie to any other corner of the lot of which the parcel was a part. Unless one wants (against all reason) to insist that the parcel is to be located in relation to the present location of the shore, rather than the shore as it existed at the time of the original conveyance, then the question of the prior location of the shoreline remains relevant more than a century later.
I don't think any surveyor I know would locate those lots based on the present shoreline. Anyone who does would be beyond stupid.
> > That would be irrelevant due to the fact that it's a littoral boundary, which is probably why they weren't dimensioned in the first place.
>
> Actually, the map was compiled at a scale of 1 in. = 40 chains. None of the lots are dimensioned on it. So, if anyone asked you if you could calculate where the shore of Galveston Island was in 1837 based upon that map of the 1837 survey, you'd tell them that there's no way you could ever figure that one out because the line has moved by hundreds of feet inland? :>
No. What I would say is that I have to move inland, and build it back to the coast and the lines are, where the lines are, at that point.
If I were forced, with a gun to my head, to note the location of the shoreline in 1837, it would be per scale from the old map, AFTER I located with parent lines and built it out.
A possible solution
If the surveyor only ran (or only reported) every other lot length, the drafting department may have come up with something like this:
However, more physical evidence would be required to actually determine what they did on the ground..:-S
A possible solution
> If the surveyor only ran (or only reported) every other lot length, the drafting department may have come up with something like this:
The fatal objection to that, though, is how inefficient and unworkable actually chaining every other side lot line would be compared to just traversing along the wide open beach and marking lot corners on the way. The beach was almost certainly the main highway into the west part of the island, so it would have been obvious even to casual inspection that the surveyors hadn't fulfilled the requirement that they survey and mark the lots if only half the corners on the beach were marked.
Considering that the front along the Gulf of Mexico followed a wide, straight sand beach, part of the solution almost certainly lies in figuring out what the easiest method available in 1837 would have been to have marked the shoreward lot corners and at the same time gotten the dimensions of the lots.
My own view is that a stair-step traverse, running perpenticular across the lot and then parallel with the side lot line to a point near the shore would have been the method of choice since it required minimal calculation and only about 20% more line chained than the computationally heavy method of simply running along the skewed shore line, calculating the distances at which the side lines would intersect it.
> If I were forced, with a gun to my head, to note the location of the shoreline in 1837, it would be per scale from the old map, AFTER I located with parent lines and built it out.
That would not be a very good choice considering the condition of the original map, its scale (1 in. = 40 chains = 1/2 mile) and the fact that the acreages noted both on the original, and two early copies are unquestioned.
