Before a surveyor gets called in, a private individual will have some reason to have a tract of land surveyed. How does this individual find a tract, assuming that we are talking about virgin land which has never passed from the crown or from the proprietor to a private individual? The individual must scout around looking for a piece of land that he would like to own, to which no one else has any pretensions. The easier part may be finding some desirable land. But does anyone else has any prior claim on it? It might already be patented, but consulting the patent books would not be easy. What one must look for are visible markers that tell the public at large that the tract has been claimed. In conjunction with this, if any residents are present in the area, one asks people if the land is claimed.
When the Second Colony people were getting ready to move, they scouted land but found that large tracts of it to the west of Germanna were already claimed. They complained about the practice of marking land without laying a formal claim to it or settling it. The Germans had to go about 25 miles to find land that was available. They presumably went with other Germans and made their claims taking the others into account. Having found land they liked, they would mark it.
How much land were they to mark out? A popular size was 400 acres, but, once one is on the ground, what are the dimensions of such a piece of property? This was not a survey, it was the potential owner’s estimation of how much land he was claiming. He probably erected markers and blazed trees to make his lines more clear to his neighbors, now and in the future.
Eventually, the surveyor was called in to survey the land. The potential owner might say he wanted 400 acres in a neat rectangular parcel. The surveyor would have some handy guides which told him how long the sides could be to get the 400 acres. Whether the plot as surveyed and marked would actually contain 400 acres would be another story. But, in general, the surveyor knew what he wanted to do.
The problem in running the courses was that a lot of forest intervened between the end points of the lines that would be the sides. As the surveyor prepares to set out from one point, the only instructions he might have could be that the next point was a pine tree over the ridge and across the creek beyond that. So how should he set the angle of the course? Basically, the problem in running a line was in obtaining a line of sight which determined the angle. Or the surveyor, after hearing the claimant’s desire, might suggest that the line ought to run, say, 60 degrees west of north. There would be no certainty that this course would strike the pine tree.
(03 Feb 05)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.