The scope of the work of surveyors was as different in New England and in Virginia as were the basic land systems of the two regions. Despite the swift settlement of New England in the 1630's and 1640's, fewer opportunities existed there for professional surveyors than in Virginia. Public lands, both the grants for the towns and the division of tracts within townships, were usually laid out by committees of citizens appointed by the legislature in one case, and by the town meeting in the other. Once the great migration ended, the reluctance of New England communities to withdraw parcels of land from their future reserves limited demand for surveyors. Disputes over property lines between neighbors were usually resolved through arbitration by village elders. Private sales of land were discouraged or prohibited by an ethos which condemned treating land as a commodity. This ethos also virtually banned the individual migration from town to town within the colony. The opposites are necessary for a thriving real estate market. As long as the Puritan ideal of agrarian utopias directed toward religious perfection prevailed and in rural towns this remained viable throughout the Seventeenth Century there was little encouragement of the development of the surveying profession.
In New England, it was only in the Eighteenth Century, when the pressure of population upon the land and the decline in religious motivation made land speculation respectable, that surveying committees were abandoned in favor of use of specialized professionals. The relatively good education system in the region then enabled a corps of surveyors to develop rapidly. But, by the time this happened, much of the area’s best land had passed into private hands. Although surveyors were regulated by the Colonial legislatures of New England, they were not incorporated into the fabric of local government and did not have the prestigious place in the social structure of their counterparts in Virginia. The difference in regional opportunities for surveyors even at the end of the Colonial period is indicated by the fact that, after the American Revolution, men from New England sought work in disproportionate numbers surveying the federal lands of the Northwest Territory, while Virginians scorned the low pay of the new government.
Virginia’s land policies, in contrast to those of New England, encouraged the development of the surveying profession. The difficulties of measuring metes and bounds of large non-contiguous parcels shaped by the choices of the patentee created a demand for surveyors with specialized skills. Their services were also needed to settle the boundary disputes that were inherent in the system of indiscriminate location. Their workload was further increased by other aspects of the colony’s society, most notably the instability of its population and endemic land speculation.
(11 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.