History and Research Blog #7

A Day in the Life of the Surveyor

In the year 1847, Iowa had been a state for one year, and even though its borders extended as far west as the Missouri River, the land hadn’t been measured out and divided up that far.

At the time the Dutch settled in Lake Prairie Township, Marion County was on the frontier. Townships and personal properties had been marked out in the east, to the north, and to the south, but not yet to the west. The need for surveying grew in urgency because federal surveys had to be completed before land could be legally sold to settlers.

As I researched what was happening in Southest Iowa during Iowa’s first months of statehood, I discovered some interesting information about the surveyor, his job, and his significance, as well as his working conditions.

Surveying was done by a team of people that included the supervisor, or the deputy surveyor, the chainmen, the axmen, the flagmen, and a cook. This team would have spent the night sleeping in tents out on the open prairie. The cook would make them breakfast, and then they would go to work.

The surveyor set up his compass, also known as a circumfrentor, on a tripod. The compass used a magnetic needle to determine direction. Then he would guide the chainmen according to that bearing. Last, he would record measurements in a field notebook.

The chainmen measured distances with a surveyor’s chain. This chain was a series of links 66 feet long. As the chainmen advanced across the terrain, lying chain down as they went, the surveyor would record distance, direction, streams crossed, hills and valleys, timber, prairie, and any distinctive landmarks.

The axmen were needed to chop down brush or smaller tress so that the chain could get all the way to the ground. Sometimes a surveyor would oversee a controlled burn of prarire grass for the same reason. The grass could grow taller than a man’s height at five to six feet, so the surveyor had to clear a path before he could do his work.

The flagment helped to keep the lines straight by driving posts or markers into the dirt at every mile corner or section corner.

This was the basic pattern of their work through all conditions and seasons of weather, and through any terrain of timber or open prairie. They contended with insects, poison ivy, heat, wind, and lack of shade or shelter.

The teams usually ate a simple meal in the field during a brief break from their work. During a ten or twelve hour work day, the survey crew could walk up to thirty miles. They would have to wade through water and cut through timber or prairie grass as they went.

In the evening, the crew returned to camp where the surveyor checked his calculations, made updates to his notebook, and planned the next day’s work. He watched for error because a mistake would require re-surveying of many miles of land.

At the time the Dutch settled in Marion County, some of the land had already been surveyed and sold to farmers. But there were still portions of land owned by the government that had to be measured and marked for the purchase by the new settlers.

In the book Iowa Letters, Henry Hospers notes in a letter to his paretns in Holland that he helped on a survey crew and had assisted with a controlled burn initiated by the surveyor. He notes the terrain in lake Prairie Township, and writes of the wildlife he encountered while on the job.

In the life of the surveyor, accuracy was most important. The most valuable item in his camp was the field book. Every measurement and observation was carefully recorded. Those notes eventually became official government records that determined the ownership of millions of acres across Iowa and the American West. The surveyor’s work preceded settlement of the land, so he was one of the first people to systematically map the landscape that would become a civilized agricultureal community.