One reason all old surveys are “off” is that True North had not been discovered. Old deeds are a few degrees off, which makes a difference if you are trying to connect several to a landmark. Most modern computer programs can correct this fault and adjust old surveys towards true North. And people who like math and aren’t lazy can do it themselves.   The surveyors, the clerks, and people who came along and copied plats no doubt made errors in transcription.  It also mattered which nationality the surveyor was.  It helps if he identified his survey as being in “English measure”.  Other measuring systems were used in America, and used chains of differing lengths. [Scottish, Irish, German systems, etc.]  If a survey mentions “prime” or “seconds”, don’t use the English chain measurements.  This system, which used “seconds”,   used links of 1 foot in length, called “prime”. So the chain of 100 links was 100 feet [now that is my kind of math – nice and simple!]

  If you still have a plat that is way off, but it appears to have enough calls,  [at least 3] instead of using 7.92 inches per link, try using 8.928 inches, 10.08 inches, or 1.9 inches per link, each with 100 links per chain.  It might magically come together.

  An Irish community in Virginia could have used 8.928 inches per chain, while a Scottish community used 10.08.  An educated surveyor might have used the engineer’s method of 1 foot links, or 2 rods of 33 feet. So, I’m not so sure the surveys that don’t work are “way off”, or if we just don’t know what system was used to measure.  I know of a plat in Northern Virginia, of just 300 acres, in which there was a “surplus” of 160 acres.  The original survey was for a French immigrant, in a largely German community.  So now I need to know what the French and German method of measuring was, or at least who measured.

  Another great way to learn about surveying – and ask questions – is yahoo’s mailing list, called SurveyHistory. [one word]  “This group is for the general discussion of the history of the science of surveying. All periods are on the table, with particular emphasis on 18th Century surveying. Topics include instruments and makers, surveyors, instruments, techniques, maps, and more”.  There are currently 96 members, some of whom are professional surveyors, historians,  historical re-enactors, and even scientists who worked on the Geodetic Survey of the United States.  Some good questions would liven things up. To join, you can send an email to:

  [log in to unmask]

  Langdon Hagen-Long

  JB Garrett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

  > If you go into most courthouses in Virginia and probably other states you will still find land being bought and sold using metes and bounds descriptions from 100+ years ago with distances in poles with approximations of acreage that can be widely different from what actually exists. And you also get
transcription errors where the lawyer/clerk has omitted lines of the description to the point of where you can't figure out where the property lines are supposed to be.

John Garrett


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