Survey says…
It was spelled out in the law: “the territory ceded by individual States to the United States, which has been purchased of the Indian inhabitants,” was to be divided into “townships of six miles square, by lines running due north and south, and others crossing these at right angles…”1
And, the law said, “The lines shall be measured with a chain.”2
So…
What exactly is a chain anyway?
Black’s Law Dictionary tells us it was a “measure used by engineers and surveyors, being twenty-two yards in length.”3
Called a Gunter’s chain, after its inventor, English mathematician Edmund Gunter, or a surveyor’s chain, because that’s what it was used for, or just a chain, as in the Public Land Survey Act of 1785, a chain was supposed to be “exactly 22 yards (about 20 m) long and divided into 100 links. In the device, each link is a solid bar. … An area of 10 square chains is equal to one acre.”4
Obviously these were not lightweight devices. And that’s why you see references, in deeds and even in the law, to chain carriers — people who were used to physically move the chain and place it where the surveyor said it should go. Whenever a survey record still exists, identifying the chain carriers can help link families together as well as the land: the chain carriers were often kin to the person for whom the land was being surveyed.5
“During the 1700s and 1800s, Gunter’s Chain was the standard for measuring distances and played a primary role in mapping out America. The chain consisted of 100 links and its total length was 4 poles (66 feet). Each link was connected to the next by a round ring. Eighty chains equaled one mile.”6
Except for one little problem: “Because the chains were hand-made, their measurements were rarely exact.”7
Hey, close enough…
Except… maybe not close enough…
Not, it appears, for the States of North and South Carolina, which are about to redraw the line between them that was originally surveyed with chains just like these — and has now been resurveyed with global positioning satellites.
According to a report just this past week from the Associated Press that reader Larry Head spotted and called to The Legal Genealogist‘s attention, when surveyors used chains like these here to document the border between those states back in the 18th century, they were to given a specific set of instructions from the English king to draw the 334-mile border from the mountains in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east.8
But squabbling continued for generations, and re-arose more than 20 years ago, at which point the states figured it was time to settle it for once and for all: “When issues arose regarding the state boundary between York County, SC and Gaston County, NC in the early 1990s, the SC Geodetic Survey and the NC Geodetic Survey signed a Memorandum of Agreement in April 1993 to cooperatively re-establish the South Carolina–North Carolina boundary.” 9
According to the news report, the two Carolinas agreed to resurvey the border still using the basic instructions from 1735. Doing anything else would need Congressional approval.10 There had been other surveys — in 1764, 1772, 1813, 1815, 1905, and 1928,11 but the modern survey would be using today’s modern technology.
And that newest, most modern survey shows that the border is perhaps as much as several hundred feet from what it had long been thought to be. The result, assuming that legislation pending in both states is passed adopting the survey: some 19 homes and a number of businesses will be changing addresses. Three North Carolina houses are really in South Carolina; 16 South Carolina houses are really in North Carolina.12
So when we as genealogists struggle with understanding deeds and surveys that talk about chains… think about those Carolinians moving north and south.
Chained, it seems, not to the past, but to the future.
SOURCES
- “An Ordinance for ascertaining the mode of disposing of Lands in the Western Territory,” 20 May 1785, Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789 (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1933), 28: 375; digital images, “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875,” Library of Congress, American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html : accessed 30 May 2016). ↩
- Ibid., at 376. ↩
- Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 190, “chain.” ↩
- Encyclopædia Britannica (http://www.m-w.com : accessed 12 Aug 2014), “surveyor’s chain.” ↩
- See generally “Surveying Units and Terms: Chain Bearer,” Speculation Land Collection, Ramsey Library, University of North Carolina at Asheville (http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/speculation_lands/ : accessed 30 May 2016). ↩
- “Surveyor’s Chain,” Colonial Williamburg E-Newsletter (http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/ : accessed 30 May 2016). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- See Jeffrey Collins and Gary D. Robertson, Associated Press, “Altered State: Border Redraw Moves 19 Homes in the Carolinas,” ABC News, posted 29 May 2016 (http://abcnews.go.com/ : accessed 30 May 2016). ↩
- South Carolina Boundary Commission Report for FY 2012-13, South Carolina Legislature (http://www.scstatehouse.gov/ : accessed 30 May 2016). ↩
- Collins and Robertson, Associated Press, “Altered State: Border Redraw Moves 19 Homes in the Carolinas.” ↩
- South Carolina Boundary Commission Report for FY 2012-13. ↩
- Collins and Robertson, Associated Press, “Altered State: Border Redraw Moves 19 Homes in the Carolinas.” ↩
A number of issues that will dramatically affect people’s lives have yet to be addressed beyond what was mentioned in the AP article you referenced.
Title issues including title insurance, mortgages (SC) vs deeds of trust (NC), tenancies by the entirely not recognized by SC, foreclosures mostly non-judicial in NC and judicial in SC (except for certain time shares) are just a few of the problems facing the people who have been moved from one state to another.
In the more rugged areas, primarily Greenville, Pickens, and Oconee Counties, most surveying took place in the winter because of the virtually impassable undergrowth and rattlesnakes. You literally cannot see where you are stepping.
It’s absolutely a huge change for the folks being affected, Suzanne. Hard to imagine in this day and age, but…
All of the old metes and bounds surveys were made with chain and magnetic compass. The magnetic declination between True north and Magnetic north affects where the compass needle points and the declination changes with geographic location and over the years. So to plat a survey on a modern map you have to get the magnetic declination and the right or left direction for the survey’s location and year from National Centers for Environmental Information.
The maps I have seen created by genealogists are not using this correction. If you use True north on a modern map you introduce an error in the bearings equal to the magnetic declination for the place and time of the survey. In 1750s North Carolina the declination is zero and a magnetic compass pointed at True north but in New England for that era the compass could be off by 40 degrees.
Good to know, thanks.
NOAA has a magnetic declination calculator which you can set by year.
https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/
This reminds about a story a few years ago which pointed out that most of California’s boundaries were off! Using today’s technology the northern border would extend further into Oregon (which definitely would not make those people happy), and the eastern border through Lake Tahoe would extend further into Nevada (ditto!). It was agreed to let the borders remain “as is”.
Can’t even begin to imagine the uproar, and lawsuits, if anyone tried to change the borders now!
Sometimes you just don’t want to consider it…
The spot where Utah and the other “Four Corners” states (Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico) intersect is also improperly surveyed. Unlike North and South Carolina, it is accepted that the boundaries are where they have traditionally been viewed as being for legal purposes. I wonder why North and South Carolina feel it important to correct historical errors when other states do not.
According to a government website, “there is a discrepancy between the actual location, which we know to a high degree of accuracy, and our best knowledge of where it was intended to be located … this offset is in fact only about 1800 feet, or less. … There is, however, uncertainty in precisely quantifying the relationship between the intended and actual monument locations due to changes, since 1875, in some technical details of the geodetic reference systems utilized. The actual offset might in fact be considerably less than our estimate.
“Regardless of the technical nuances, we can confidently say that, considering the relatively primitive surveying technology of the day, the remote and difficult prevailing field conditions, and uncertainty in the survey’s beginning coordinates for Ship Rock, Chandler Robbins’ survey was a resounding success. He ‘nailed’ the location of the Four Corners, to the best of his ability, using the tools and information available to him at the time.
“Finally, we cannot overemphasize the fact that the aforementioned technical geodetic details are absolutely moot when considering any question of the correctness or validity of the Four Corners monument in marking the intersection of the four states. Indeed, the monument marks the exact spot where the four states meet. A basic tenet of boundary surveying is that once a monument has been established and accepted by the parties involved (in the case of the Four Corners monument, the parties were the four territories and the U.S. Congress), the location of the physical monument is the ultimate authority in delineating a boundary. Issues of legality trump scientific details, and the intended location of the point becomes secondary information. In surveying, monuments rule!”
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/INFO/fourcorners.shtml
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 and the Treaty of San Lorenzo of 1795 that I am researching right now deal with a lot of boundary issues and claims like that. Most of the treaties the US signed have a claims clause. There is a lot of information about ancestors in the claims records and commissions these treaties created and little of the data is used or published.
Did a whole lecture on Spanish law records, largely focusing on these claims cases, at NGS just weeks ago. Lovely records, widely available on microfilm and digitized at FloridaMemory (http://www.floridamemory.com/collections/spanishlandgrants/ ).
Florida Memory covers Spanish East Florida and the Pensacola District of Spanish West Florida and researchers are lucky to have them. My research involves the Mobile District and no records for that district have been found in Florida Memory.
The Baton Rouge District of Spanish West Florida also has lots of records but many records for the Mobile District are lost or missing. Florida Memory notes, “Unfortunately, most of the records for West Florida are missing.” The Notary records for Mobile District and a number of Land Claims Commission files for the District are know to be missing.
I still have to research a number of issues in Claims and Foreign Affairs of the American State Papers, some volumes of National Government Journal and Register of Official Papers, and a dissertation “The Adams-Onís Treaty Claims Commission: Spoliation and Diplomacy, 1795-1824″
The impetus for the SC-NC boundary redo was title insurance companies refusing to issue title insurance to propertyowners for property located on the border.Only recently (within the last 20 years or so) has development of homes become widespread along the border, particularly in Greenville County. So developers with lots of money building and selling upscale homes with magnificent views in gated communities were the initial driving forces.
You might want to check out the spats between VA and MD, VA and WV, SC and GA over boundaries. Some of those are ongoing. I believe the one involving VA and MD ended up in the US Supreme Court. I know the SC and GA spat did. All in all, it is interesting reading.
The Maryland/Virginia/West Virginia boundary disputes are primarily due to the origin & location of the Potomac River. Last dispute settled in 2014! The Supreme Court has to decide boundary disputes. Usually it goes with “practice” rather than precision. Don’t know why NC/SC didn’t go that way and just get it resolved that way.
The Supreme Court is the only court with jurisdiction to decide disputes between states. It’s in the Constitution.
Both states made the decision to pursue this particular solution because it was much less costly that litigating it through the legal system. The SC-GA spat cost SC $12 million to litigate. I don’t know what the cost was for GA.
This will affect a total of 18 individuals/businesses. Much of the land along the SC/NC border is in the national park system and where the boundary is doesn’t really matter to taxing authorities or title insurance companies in that case.
We published the following article on “the chain” in 2008.
Best regards,
Rick Frederick
Archivist and Webmaster
Caswell County Historical Association
The Chain
Nice, thanks!!
One of the worst problems for Texas research is that of missing markers. As a child I noticed missing concrete markers in several areas of the lower Rio Grande Valley. These were not small markers as they were about two feet high and a base of at least six square inches and were labeled with latitude and longitude. On my husband’s family land in Central Texas some well meaning person brought us a spike used to mark a tree that was one marker for the land claiming it was hurting the tree. Markers set for the Old San Antonio Road have vanished. Those of us interested in history of our areas need to be educating others not interested in genealogy.