Quarter Corner
To set the stage:
In 1869, A. B. Beauvais subdivides Township 1 North, Range 14 East, Mount Diablo Meridian, and sets the 1/4 between Section 27 and Section 26 with no bearing trees and no significant topo calls on the line.
In 1871 he returns to the area and, being also a Deputy Mineral Surveyor, surveys the Golden Rule Quartz Mine. He sets the NE corner of the mine and calls to a 12" Live Oak as a bearing tree to the corner and ties to the 1/4 corner which he had set two years previously some 200 feet away.
In 1887, J. P. Dart, another Deputy Mineral Surveyor, who has been in the area since 1849 arrives to survey the Erin Go Braugh Quartz Mine which adjoins the Golden Rule. He says, in a written statement to the Surveyor General, that the 1/4 is gone and in fact, by his own knowledge, it was gone in 1871 when Beauvais claimed to have tied to it because it had been set in a cultivated orchard and was almost immediately destroyed. In addition, Dart says Beauvais' tie was wrong or the 1/4 corner was set incorrectly because when he goes on to reset it by single proportion and makes a new tie to the NE corner of the Golden Rule, the difference between the ties puts Dart's 1/4 about 30 feet south of Beauvais.
It is likely, I think, that even if the 1/4 was gone when Beauvais came back to survey the Golden Rule, he knew where it had been only two years before; perhaps in relation to one of the orchard trees (although why didn't he use them for bearing trees? There is no evidence of an orchard today, the area is dryland pasture.) Maybe he recalled its relationship to some mine feature. The mine was there at the time of the PLLS survey but hadn't been surveyed itself yet. In any case, he knew where it was or had been.
Today there is no trace of any 1/4 corner, but there is a drill steel that has long been accepted as the NE corner of the Golden Rule and a 29" Live Oak which may or may not be the bearing tree. It hasn't been cored and doesn't fit the drill steel by about 5-6 feet (it's about 80 feet away.)
Would you accept the drill steel and replace the 1/4 corner at Beauvais' disputed (but original?) position based on his tie to the mine, calculate a tie from the tree to the mine corner using its original measurement and thence to the 1/4 corner (a sort of second degree tie), or proportion the corner, or.....
Mind you, I'm not a PLSS type, so take my answer with a grain of salt. And I'm assuming from your description that it is in a rural area so that a couple of feet one way or the other shouldn't harm anyone or bend anyone out of shape.
If indeed you are satisfied that the original 1/4 is missing, then it strikes me that for 140+ years the courner has been bouncing around in about a 30' circle. If the piece of drill steel has been generally accepted for some period of time (the longer, the better) I'd be inclined to continue to honor it and do anything I can to convince future surveyors to accept it.
Now having said that, there should be other corners N,S,E & W from this corner. How many have you tied to attempt to verify the location of the drill steel? Is it a reasonable fit to those adjacent corners?
> In 1871 he returns to the area and, being also a Deputy Mineral Surveyor, surveys the Golden Rule Quartz Mine. He sets the NE corner of the mine and calls to a 12" Live Oak as a bearing tree to the corner and ties to the 1/4 corner which he had set two years previously some 200 feet away.
> Today there is no trace of any 1/4 corner, but there is a drill steel that has long been accepted as the NE corner of the Golden Rule and a 29" Live Oak which may or may not be the bearing tree. It hasn't been cored and doesn't fit the drill steel by about 5-6 feet (it's about 80 feet away.)
Just from the difference in sizes of the Live Oaks, I'd be skeptical that they are one and the same tree. 12" in 1871 and 29" in 2010 is an average growth rate of about 8 years per inch of diameter. That would be unlikely for the Live Oaks that grow in upland settings in Central Texas with an annual rainfall of about 32".
So, if the Live Oak is in fact not the BT, what evidence is really left other than the drill steel? I'd want to know when it was placed, by whom, and for what purpose. Is it obviously of 20th century origin, for example?
The question of whether the 1871 surveyor's tie to the 1/4 corner was actually measured or the product of mere speculation really has to be resolved in favor of it having been measured to give the tie some evidentiary weight, wouldn't you say?
Good question, Dave. We have not attempted to resurvey the mine which would likely be another bucket of worms and probably not feasible at this time. I guess my question is just "knowing what we know now, what would you do?"
Kent
We know nothing about the drill steel, but it is quite possibly 19th century.
Also, the credibility of the 1871 tie is definitely key.
Kent
>In addition, Dart says Beauvais' tie was wrong or the 1/4 corner was set incorrectly because when he goes on to reset it by single proportion and makes a new tie to the NE corner of the Golden Rule, the difference between the ties puts Dart's 1/4 about 30 feet south of Beauvais.
So, the rationale would be that you accept that Surveyor Dart found Surveyor Beauvais's corner in place and that the drill steel is thought to be a late 19th century perpetuation of the same mark?
Wouldn't the record that you would be depending on be inconsistent if you:
a) accept a drill steel as being the corner identified by Dart (on some undisclosed evidence) but
b) disbelieve Dart's account that the 1/4 was not in place when the tie from it to the mine corner was supposedly made?
Sounds like the evidence is pretty thin to me, particularly if there is some plausible alternate explanation for how the tie to the 1/4 corner was derived that doesn't involve actually measuring it.
You didn't mention (or I missed it) why you didn't run between existing section corners for verification. Wouldn't this be the first step (if they're in) before making assumptions. Are they still there? Is the NE mine corner supposed to be on said section line?
It appears from the MTP that the Section corner to the south is also inside a Mineral Survey.
I don't know what the answer is.
> > Would you accept the drill steel and replace the 1/4 corner at Beauvais' disputed (but original?) position based on his tie to the mine, calculate a tie from the tree to the mine corner using its original measurement and thence to the 1/4 corner (a sort of second degree tie), or proportion the corner, or.....
Before I used the drill steel to re-establish the 1/4 cor. I'd really like to know it's relation to the other mining claim corners. Just because it is the corner of common repute does not mean that it's spacial relation the the missing 1/4 corner is the same as it was in the time period of it's original establishment. Same with the Oak tree. As Sean mentioned I would also like to know the relationship of all of this to the two opposing section corners.
The lack of bearing trees and topo calls on the mile in question raises the possibility that it was only established on paper, and it's tie to the mining claim was calculated. I'd like to read the field notes of the whole Tp. to get a feel for Beauvais style, and retrace some of it or review other surveys to get a feel for his accuracy and dependability. The fact that the 1/4 corner based on Beauvais' tie to the mining claim corner is 30' out of position based on a "mathematically correct" (proportioned) position doesn't mean it was "incorrectly established".
In order to rely on either of the surveyors' ties and the drill steel and/or oak tree, I'd need to know the relationship those positions to other corners of the record.
Also, is there any record of a reply to Dart's letter to the Surveyor General?
Sounds like an interesting situation. Good Luck!
DJJ
Additional info
Sean - The NE corner of the mine is not on the section line. The theoretical position of a proportioned corner based on today's measurements is almost exactly between the two positions based on the two different ties from the drill steel.
Doug - Good point about the drill steel perhaps being acceptable for what it is purported to be (a corner of the mine), but not acceptable as an accessory to the 1/4 corner. No response that I know of to Dart's statement which, incidentally, was included in the notes of his mineral survey, not as a separate document
