The Sangamon County Deed Record on February 17, 1836 has this notation from Abraham Lincoln, the Surveyor.
“I hereby certify that the town of Petersburgh has been surveyed according to law, and that this is a correct plat of the same. A. Lincoln.”
“The Surveyor of Sangamon,” Lincoln later wrote in a third-person autobiography, “offered to depute to A[braham] that portion of his work which was within his part of the country. He accepted, procured a compass and chain, studied Flint, and Gibson a little, and went at it. This procured bread, and kept soul and body together.” Calhoun was a devout Democrat and the Whiggish Lincoln only took the job after he was assured his politics would not be held against him.
Over the three years he was deputy surveyor, he surveyed the towns of New Boston, Bath, Albany, Huron, and resurveyed the city of Petersburg. The city had been surveyed years before but Lincoln was asked to redo it when it began to grow more substantially, in part as New Salem began to fade away and its residents moved to nearby Petersburg. He also laid out the area that town fathers decided to name after its surveyor – Lincoln, Illinois. Lincoln christened the town with the juice from a watermelon. Beyond towns he also surveyed and laid out numerous roads and private properties, including a bridge over the Salt River at Musick Crossing. In one case, he found in resurveying some land that the seller had by error granted more land than he received payment for. Lincoln convinced his client, the descendant of the original buyer, to pay the cost of the additional land to the seller’s heirs. He was paid $2.50 for each quarter section of land, although as little as 25 cents for smaller lots.
Overall, Lincoln found surveying to be profitable both financially and in building relationships for his later political activities. “Mr. Lincoln was a good surveyor,” one investor noted, “he did it all himself, without help from anybody except chainmen.” The chainmen were men and boys would carry chains, drive stakes, and blaze trees for Lincoln, always with an ear out to hear Lincoln’s stories and jokes. Others were equally impressed with Lincoln’s honesty and industriousness. Whenever there was a dispute, both parties relied on Lincoln to settle the matter with his compass and chain.
[Adapted from my forthcoming book]
[Photo credit: Lincoln the Surveyor by Lloyd Ostendorf]
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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I worked with and used the surveyors’ products in many instances during the twenty years and more I worked as an environmental planner and environmental consultant, I soon learned that surveyors had to be meticulously accurate in their field work, and scrupulously honest in their reporting of that work. If a surveyor failed in either aspect, he was as good as ruined. Lincoln obviously passed both tests.
I’ve seen Lincoln’s surveying equipment at the New Salem site in Illinois, but have never done any surveying myself. Pretty cool that you’ve done it. The piece I put in this post is a tiny part of what I’m covering in my new book, which will include a lot ore on the math and precision of surveying. Manuscript is due by June 1st and the book is targeted to be released by this time next year.
I took two quarters of surveying in college as an elective… it got me outside. I still have my field books, which are treated as precisely kept and carefully maintained legal documents. The records look much like those of science experiments, with as much documentation of process and environment as recording of actual measurements. The mathematics of mechanical error-correction is as much a part of surveying as trigonometry, so accurate surveying can be surprisingly involved..
My instructor once observed that the status of “surveyor” during the early years of the US was the historical equivalent of advertising an “enlightenment” mathematical education as well as verifying an understanding of the legal right to property ownership. It was a commonly listed skill/title among the country’s founders. I’m wondering if that same line of thinking extended into Lincoln’s time?
That’s cool that you did surveying in college. I don’t recall there even being that option, but perhaps in the engineering department. I go into the math more in the chapter this snippet was adapted from.
I suppose there is no shock in there being a big split between North and South with regards to land titles, although perhaps not in the way expected. Land ownership in the western territories of the Southern states was a nightmare because of lack of accurate land surveying. Lincoln’s father lost much of his farmland in Kentucky on more than one occasion because the land he bought was claimed by others. It’s one of the reasons he moved the family to Indiana just as it was formally becoming a state. The territories that later became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin were all part of the Northwest Ordinance, passed before the Constitution and immediately repassed after the new system was in place. Besides banning slavery, the Ordinance specified an exact system of surveying and land titling. In the South as tobacco then cotton and sugar became more profitable, rich owners used their political and economic power to snap up land from smaller farmers and form plantations. So a reliable and honest surveyor became one of the most important and respected people in society (except when they were being bought off).
I don’t think the idea of surveying in Lincoln’s “west” had much to do with advertising an “enlightenment” mathematical education, which was more an eastern elite thing. To Lincoln it was a job that both brought in money and helped the common man keep from being cheated. Like most other things, Lincoln largely taught himself the skills needed, from the trig to the physical manhandling of a compass and chain. The legal right to property ownership was pretty well ensconced by Lincoln’s time and Lincoln was considered an honest arbiter. Of course, most of the land of America was “available” to be surveyed and settled because white Europeans had forced Native Americans into smaller and smaller enclaves further west, but that’s another post.
The class was lower-division, and I think mostly to support Civil Engineering. I would have taken a third quarter, but it was surprisingly time-consuming.
I can imagine the property ownership conflicts when boundaries were likely determined by forest-covered ridge-lines, creeks and piles of rocks, and claims granted by informal jurisdictions.
Out here, transcontinental railroad surveys established an official baseline used to settle land disputes, including between California and Nevada (“Sagebrush War”). Still, subsequent surveys wobbled the boundary back and forth by almost 3-miles. Property now being valuable, the local boundary wasn’t settled until 1985, and by Federal mandate.
Yup, a lot of property borders were “that big rock” (which could be moved), “that little creek,” (which would meander over time), or “let’s just insert a stick right here.”
The Homestead Act and Pacific Railway Act pretty much delineated the west into distinct pieces. Of course there still is an honesty factor. Interesting that boundaries are still being argued in more or less current times.
This is an amazing post about Lincoln. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you liked it.