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The history of surveying in the United States included the mapping of large, unknown territories and the layout of the District of Columbia. Several presidents were involved, including George Washington.
George Washington was not only a founding political father of the U.S., but he was also a founding surveyor of Virginia, as well. At the age of eleven, he inherited Ferry Farm. When George reached school age, instead of a career in the Royal Navy, George went to school to study surveying and geometry. His first surveying tools were from his own storehouse on Ferry Farm. [1] At the age of 17, under the tutelage of Joshua Fry, he surveyed the northern neck of Virginia and became the county surveyor for Culpeper County, Virginia. By the time of the French and Indian War, he had laid out most of northern Virginia, and this knowledge would contribute to his success during the war.
From 1747 to 1799, he surveyed 200 tracts of land, and due to his also being a land speculator, he amassed 65,000 acres (260 km2) of land. [1]
During the Revolutionary War, he appointed the first geographer of the Continental Army, Robert Erskine.
Surveying was not only for the wealthy plantation owners, but the entire new nation needed to be surveyed and resurveyed. Most of all, the proposed new capital city, bearing Washington's name, needed to be surveyed. A two-man team would survey what became the District of Columbia in 1791. The first was Benjamin Banneker, a free ex-slave, who learned to read, write, and do the math from his grandmother. Banneker would go on to be a leading astronomer, mathematician, clockmaker, and most of all, a surveyor. The second man was Andrew Ellicott. He would go on to do several prominent surveys of the area and assist Lewis and Clark in planning their expedition.
Prior to independence, Peter Jefferson, along with his son Thomas Jefferson, were land surveyors for the crown. At this time, surveyors used a system known as the metes and bounds system, which used "monuments"; identifiable objects such as rocks, trees, etc., as property markers. The surveyor would measure from monument to monument. The major problem with this system was the fact that these monuments were not necessarily permanent. As a result, Thomas Jefferson was involved in the creation of the Public Land Survey System. A comparison of county boundaries in the various states graphically displays the difference between the systems, as counties in the Eastern states are irregularly shaped whereas counties in the Midwest tend to be square or rectangular.
Needing money to pay the debts for the Revolutionary War, Jefferson began selling land in the Northwest Territory in plots of 160 acres (650,000 m2) for $2.50 an acre. Soon after, he sold the land in plots of 80 acres (320,000 m2) for $1.25 an acre. The NW Territory was surveyed using the Rectangular System. This system used a central point determined by a principal north–south meridian line and an east–west baseline.
Jefferson convinced Congress to accept the land deal with Napoleon. As a result of the Louisiana Purchase and Jefferson's love for nature, Jefferson organized the Lewis and Clark expedition. Andrew Ellicott taught Lewis and Clark how to use a sextant to map their position. Lewis and Clark would leave from Wood River, Illinois and document the wilderness all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Abraham Lincoln came to New Salem in 1831, and shortly after in 1832, he lost in his bid to become a state representative. The Sangamon County surveyor, John Calhoun, then offered Lincoln a job as deputy surveyor due to the high volume of resurveying.
As deputy surveyor, Lincoln surveyed five towns, four roads, and thirty properties. The first was the plat for Huron, a proposed town 30 miles (48 km) North of Springfield that never came to be. The proposal was that county would build a canal to straighten the Sangamon River, but the canal was never built. The last town Lincoln laid out was New Boston, a town at the confluence of the Iowa River and the Mississippi River. Instead of payment for his work, Lincoln had his surveying equipment repossessed and sold. Unknown to Lincoln, Jimmy Short, a friend, bought all of his equipment, his horse, and his saddlebags. Short returned Lincoln's surveying equipment and later, as president, Lincoln returned the favor by making Short the Indian Agent of the Round Lake Indian Reservation.
Over the course of the 19th century, land surveying in America transformed from a prestigious, status-driven endeavor derived from the authority of a royal government and administration that had been inherited from the colonial era, to the more practical, and standardized modern field of public service as it is generally recognized today, which would lead the way in the vast expansion straight across the Continent to the West Coast. The Public Land Survey System was mainly involved in overseeing the surveying of these vast new swaths of private lands along the ever-shifting frontier, while Federal Organizations such as the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and the United States General Land Office, among several others, dealt with surveying all the lands deemed federal property in these new territories, as well as the already established post-colonial jurisdictions.
This would finally shift to the individual states' maintaining and administering the surveying of all land within their respective jurisdictions, as these new territories continually were being admitted as new states to the Union, becoming the system of land surveying that we have in the United States right down to the present day.
Benjamin Banneker was an African-American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author. A landowner, he also worked as a surveyor and farmer.
William Clark was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he grew up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Missouri.
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. Beginning with the Seven Ranges in present-day Ohio, the PLSS has been used as the primary survey method in the United States. Following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory platted lands in the Northwest Territory. The Surveyor General was later merged with the United States General Land Office, which later became a part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Today, the BLM controls the survey, sale, and settling of lands acquired by the United States.
Pierre "Peter" Charles L'Enfant was a French-American artist, professor, and military engineer who in 1791 designed the baroque styled plan for Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. His work is known today as the L'Enfant Plan which inspired plans for other world capitals such as Brasilia, New Delhi, and Canberra. In the United States, plans for Detroit, Indianapolis and Sacramento took inspiration from the plan for Washington, DC.
George Washington Glasscock was an early settler, legislator, and businessman in Texas.
The history of Washington, D.C., is tied to its role as the capital of the United States. The site of the District of Columbia along the Potomac River was first selected by President George Washington. The city came under attack during the War of 1812 in an episode known as the Burning of Washington. Upon the government's return to the capital, it had to manage the reconstruction of numerous public buildings, including the White House and the United States Capitol. The McMillan Plan of 1901 helped restore and beautify the downtown core area, including establishing the National Mall, along with numerous monuments and museums.
Andrew Ellicott was an American land surveyor who helped map many of the territories west of the Appalachians, surveyed the boundaries of the District of Columbia, continued and completed Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's work on the plan for Washington, D.C., and served as a teacher in survey methods for Meriwether Lewis.
Thomas Bullitt was a United States military officer, and surveyor from Prince William County, Virginia and pioneer on its western frontier.
The Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory was a United States government official responsible for surveying land in the Northwest Territory in the United States late in the late 18th and early 19th century. The position was created in the Land Act of 1796 to survey lands ceded by Native Americans northwest of the Ohio River and above the mouth of the Kentucky River. This act, and those that followed evolved into the Public Land Survey System.
Silvio A. Bedini was an American historian, specialising in early scientific instruments. He was Historian Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, where he served on the professional staff for twenty-five years, retiring in 1987.
The boundary markers of the original District of Columbia are the 40 milestones that marked the four lines forming the boundaries between the states of Maryland and Virginia and the square of 100 square miles (259 km2) of federal territory that became the District of Columbia in 1801. Working under the supervision of three commissioners that President George Washington had appointed in 1790 in accordance with the federal Residence Act, a surveying team led by Major Andrew Ellicott placed these markers in 1791 and 1792. Among Ellicott's assistants were his brothers Joseph and Benjamin Ellicott, Isaac Roberdeau, George Fenwick, Isaac Briggs and an African American astronomer, Benjamin Banneker.
Benjamin Ellicott was a surveyor, a county judge and a member of the United States House of Representatives from the State of New York.
Benjamin Banneker: SW 9 Intermediate Boundary Stone, also known as an Intermediate Stone of the District of Columbia, is a surveyors' boundary marker stone. The stone is located on the original boundary of the District of Columbia The stone is now on the boundary of Arlington County, Virginia and the City of Falls Church. It is within the two jurisdiction's Benjamin Banneker Park at 6620 18th Street North, Arlington.
The Washington Family by Edward Savage is a life-sized group portrait of the Washington family, including U.S. President George Washington, First Lady Martha Washington, two of her grandchildren and a black servant, most likely an enslaved man whose identity was not recorded. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., presently displays the large painting.
The Seven Ranges was a land tract in eastern Ohio that was the first tract to be surveyed in what became the Public Land Survey System. The tract is 42 miles (68 km) across the northern edge, 91 miles (146 km) on the western edge, with the south and east sides along the Ohio River. It consists of all of Monroe, Harrison, Belmont and Jefferson, and portions of Carroll, Columbiana, Tuscarawas, Guernsey, Noble, and Washington County.
The L'Enfant Plan for the city of Washington is the urban plan developed in 1791 by Major Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant for George Washington, the first president of the United States. It is regarded as a landmark in urban design and has inspired plans for other world capitals such as Brasilia, New Delhi, and Canberra. In the United States, plans for Detroit, Indianapolis, and Sacramento took inspiration from the plan for Washington, DC.
According to accounts that began to appear during the 1960s or earlier, a substantial mythology has exaggerated the accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), an African-American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author who also worked as a surveyor and farmer.
Isaac Briggs was an American engineer, surveyor and manufacturer. He lived much of his adult life with his family in Brookeville, Maryland.
George Ellicott (1760–1832) was a son of Andrew Ellicott, who with his two brothers founded Ellicott's Mills, Maryland. He was a mathematician, an amateur astronomer, a younger cousin of surveyor Major Andrew Ellicott and a friend of Benjamin Banneker. He was the father of Martha Ellicott Tyson, who became an Elder of the Quaker Meeting in Baltimore, an anti-slavery and women's rights advocate, the author of a biography of Benjamin Banneker, a founder of Swarthmore College and an inductee to the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame.
A United States postage stamp and the names of a number of recreational and cultural facilities, schools, streets and other facilities and institutions throughout the United States have commemorated Benjamin Banneker's documented and mythical accomplishments throughout the years since he lived (1731–1806). Among such memorializations of this free African American almanac author, surveyor, landowner and farmer who had knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and natural history was a biographical verse that Rita Dove, a future Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote in 1983 while on the faculty of Arizona State University.