Local History

U.S. General Land Office Surveyors' Field Notes

This article originally appeared in Exchange, a newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical Society. (Volume 36, Number 3, 1994) It is the 17th in a series of articles titled Researching Community History. The series highlights the Society's resources available to local historians. It was written by Deborah Kmetz, former local history specialist for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

A remarkable set of records exists at the Wisconsin Historical Society that offers researchers the opportunity to see Wisconsin's landscape through the firsthand observations of 19th-century surveyors. The archives holds microfilm copies of the complete set of surveyors' field notes, made between 1830 and 1866, for every section in each township in Wisconsin. The field notes record vegetation, especially tree cover; land features such as soils, streams and rock outcroppings; and evidence of human habitation including villages, cabins, trails and roads. Mapmakers at the U.S. General Land Office, first in Cincinnati and later in Dubuque, used these surveyors' notes to create the official plat maps from which the federal government sold or granted land to settlers, railroads, speculators and other interested parties. Though originally intended as a means of recording field measurements and gathering data for preparing the survey maps, the field notes continue to interest historians and geographers more than a century after the maps were completed. The field notes may be of particular value to local historians because they provide details at such specific levels as section and township.

In order to make use of these records, researchers need to know something about the land survey itself. In 1796, the relatively young United States government enacted a piece of legislation that provided a plan for the sale of lands in the area northwest of the Ohio River and above the mouth of the Kentucky River. This was not the first federal effort to address the western territory. The government had enacted a series of ordinances in 1784, 1785 and 1787 variously providing plans for development of local government and disposal of lands in what would be known as the Northwest Territory. Proceeds from land sales were to be used to retire the principal on the heavy national debt. However, the Ordinance of 1785, directed at the sale of lands, had been allowed to expire after mixed practical results. The Land Act of 1796 reestablished and built upon some of the earlier ordinances' key ideas, including a plan for a rectangular survey.

The 1796 legislation provided for dividing, through an actual survey, this territorial land into square townships, each six miles long by six miles wide. The townships themselves would be further subdivided into 36 sections, each section one mile square. Two sides of the square townships would run on true east-west lines that paralleled global latitudinal lines. The other two sides of the township squares would run on north-south lines. The western territory would become, essentially, a huge grid, to be sold or assigned, township by township, section by section. This plan became known as the U.S. Rectangular Land Survey. The plan advanced two goals: 1) to facilitate sale of the land in a relatively orderly and efficient fashion and 2) to provide a description of the land for those making purchases sight unseen.

The Land Act of 1796 and legislation in 1804 provided the method whereby land which would eventually become the state of Wisconsin could be subdivided for sale and settlement. However, when the federal government enacted these pieces of legislation, members of a variety of Native American tribes lived on the land. The U.S. government set about acquiring the tribal land in a series of land cessions and treaties. Often some European American settlement preceded the treaties, and evidence of this appears in the surveyors' field notebooks. The township surveys themselves did not usually begin until the government acquired title to the land.

The implementation of the survey by the federal government represented a change in land philosophy that would ultimately manifest itself in changes in land use. The idea of parceling land into private holdings signified a European American attitude towards the land. Prior to this, Native American philosophy focused on the same land as communally used regions, recognized as the territory of groups of people. Once the federal government acquired the land and divided it into parcels for sale, European American settlements quickly followed. Land previously used for communal, migratory activities such as hunting, maple sugaring and wild ricing, saw the development of individual farms and private lots in villages and cities.

The federal government contracted with private surveyors to walk the land, measure distances and mark significant intervals with stones, mounds of dirt or sturdy wooden posts driven into the earth. Local surveyors worked under the U.S. Surveyor General and received specific instructions for taking measurements, making adjustments, and recording in field notebooks features of the landscape. The surveyors did not work alone. They were accompanied by chainmen who actually stretched out and held the measuring chain, and sometimes by axmen, flagmen or markers, and general laborers. The surveying crews carried their own tools, camping supplies and, when necessary, canoes. The work took them across rivers, through swamps, and up and down hills.

The Wisconsin survey series begins with a field notebook completed by deputy surveyor Lucius Lyon in 1830. He and his surveying team walked and marked a portion of what would become the Wisconsin/Illinois border. The notebook contains measurements and interesting observations as the team walked from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Rock River, then moved north towards Four Lakes, going from Lake Puckaway to Duck Creek and across the portage from the Ouisconsin (Wisconsin) River to the Fox River. Along the way they followed and measured meanders on the Rock, Sugar and Puck-tan-o (Pecatonica) rivers. Lyon arranged his notebook systematically with one page usually allotted to each mile. In a page's left-hand column he recorded measurements in chains and links, with one chain equaling 66 feet, and 80 chains equaling one mile. In the right-hand column he identified land features or markings corresponding to the measurements. Below that he wrote a brief overall description of the land. A typical page follows:

Many pages contain additional kinds of observations. On the page for the 17th mile from Lake Michigan Lyon writes:

"note: Stream called by the Indians Waun-dog-e-nink or Salt Creek on account of the saltiness of the earth on its banks, which in some places is licked up by the deer so that holes are left in the ground."

The first notebook in the survey series predates the actual surveying for the rectangular grid in Wisconsin. In order for the rectangular land survey to proceed, two major directional lines needed to be established: an east-west line and a north-south line. By 1832, surveyors, including Lucius Lyon, marked both. The east-west line, called the baseline, ran from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi forming the boundary between Illinois and Wisconsin. The second major line, running north-south, was designated by the federal government solely for the purpose of the survey. It is called the Fourth Principal Meridian. It begins at the mouth of the Illinois River and runs northward intersecting the Wisconsin/Illinois baseline at the Grant County and Lafayette County border. The point where the Fourth Principal Meridian intersects with the east-west baseline is known as the "Point of Beginnings" because all further survey lines in Wisconsin were measured from this point. After intersecting the baseline, the Fourth Principal Meridian continues due north running along the Grant County and Iowa County border and proceeding through Richland, Vernon, Monroe, Jackson, Clark, Taylor, Price, Ashland and Iron Counties.

The survey identified and designated all townships in Wisconsin by reference to these two major lines. A township received a north-south number based on the number of township squares from it to the baseline. It received a range number based on how many township squares it lay east or west of the Fourth Principal Meridian. These numbers still identify the townships today. Thus the township with the identification Township 28 North, Range 7 East (T28N, R7E) lies 28 township squares north of the Wisconsin/Illinois baseline and seven township squares east of the Fourth Principal Meridian. This particular township is situated in Marathon County and encompasses parts of the city of Wausau. Researchers may use the Wisconsin Index Map below to find township locations.

The above map can be used to identify townships in Wisconsin according to the U.S. Rectangular Land Survey. To find a specific area's township number, first locate it on the map and then count the number of squares it lies from the east-west baseline (Wisconsin-Illinois border). To find the township's range number, count the number of squares it lies east or west of the Fourth Principal Meridian. The shaded square indicates Township 28 North, Range 7 East, which is located 28 squares north of the baseline, and seven squares east of the Fourth Principal Meridian. (Wisconsin Index map, by H.F. Williams, Madison, 1963.)

Researchers should remember that these rectangular survey townships (also known as congressional townships) do not always correspond to political or civil towns. The survey townships are simply geographical designations located in a large, abstract, non-varying grid that extends over the Midwest and West. In contrast, political towns in Wisconsin are units of government primarily designed to provide services, receive taxes and administer voting in rural areas. Their geographical sizes and shapes vary.

After establishing the intersection of the baseline and meridian in 1832, surveyors began to lay the lines for the individual townships. During the next several months, surveyors moved out from the intersection point walking and measuring about 50 townships in the southwest corner of the state. Surveying of township boundaries followed for portions of what is now Dane County in 1833 and 1834; of what are now Outagamie, Brown, Calumet, Fond du Lac and Manitowoc Counties in 1833, 1834 and 1835; Walworth and Jefferson Counties in 1836. Lincoln County contains some of the last townships to be surveyed in Wisconsin. Deputy Surveyor A. Anderson and his team measured lines for Township 38 North, between Ranges 2 and 3 East in July and August of 1864. With only a few exceptions, surveyors did not begin work on townships located more than 30 squares north of the baseline until after 1850.

Each township received two types of survey: an exterior survey and an interior survey. The men conducting exterior surveys measured and marked the four lines that made up the border of a township. The men working on the interior surveys measured and mapped the internal division of the township into the 36 sections. Two types of notebooks — exterior and interior — exist for each township. Because of shared boundaries, the exterior notes for any given township may be found in as many as four different notebooks. The interior notes for a township will be found in a single volume notebook.

The U.S Rectangular Land
Survey township measures
six miles by six miles.
It is subdivided into 36
sections, each one mile
square (640 acres). A
number from 1 through
36 designates each section.
These numbers are used
to identify specific sections
in land descriptions.

Both the exterior and interior field notes contain measurements and markings, general observations of the immediate landscape, and designations of the land as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd rate, for agricultural purposes. In addition, the interior field notes often include a small sketch map of the township done while in the field. The sketch map below identifies the particular numbers assigned to the sections; these numbers are always 1 through 36 in a non-varying pattern. Surveyors used these section numbers for reference throughout their notes.

In 1845 Theodore Conkey and his team surveyed Township 26 North, Range 16 East, located in present-day Shawano County. A page entry reads as follows.

The sketch map accompanying this interior survey shows the location of the sugar grove and cedar swamp noted above, as well as two more cedar swamps, a sugar camp, portions of the Wolf River, an Indian village and a trail to Green Bay.

Begun in 1830 and completed in 1866, the Wisconsin surveys span a period of great change in terms of both government and settlement. The survey notes reflect a variety of uses of the land. Many field notebooks list Indian trails, some also note wagon roads. Some, like the entry above, record sugar camps and Indian villages; they may also note single cabins and trading posts.

Some surveyors found lead mines, mill sites, scatterings of farms and cultivated fields. An example of survey lines running close to an established farm can be found in the following excerpt from the notes for Township 15 North, Range 7 East completed by Charles Phipps.

The interior field notes often contain a general summary of the surveyor's impressions of that particular township. The impressions, like many of the field observations, frequently focus on how viable the land might be for farming, lumbering or other economic endeavors. In 1865 Elisha S. Norris completed his interior survey of Township 35 North, Range 1 East with these thoughts.

General Description

"This township contains some good farming lands though it is generally too rocky. The surface is gently rolling. There is a large amount of scattering Pine timber over the entire township and the streams are large enough for floating it out."

The level of detail and acuity of observation vary from surveyor to surveyor. Some surveys appear to have been completed hastily with little more than the necessary observations. Others offer more thorough reflections and specific information. Lucius Lyon's interior surveys feature fairly lengthy general summaries, such as the one which follows for Township 1 North, Range 2 East (N.W. Territory). Lyon completed this interior survey on April 8, 1833. The land lies in what is now Lafayette County.

General Remarks

"The afore described township, embracing as it does, some of the oldest wrought and richest mines in the country, is generally rolling, first rate land, about half prairie and half thinly timbered with oak, with an undergrowth of hazel. Within its limits are three different settlements or towns, viz — 'Shullsburg' in Sections 3 & 10, 'Gratiots Grove' in Sections 22 and 23, and 'White Oak Springs' in Section 32 each of which settlements now contain about five or six families, but the two former, in the most prosperous days of the mining business, have heretofore at one time, contained not less than 40 families each.

"Besides these settlements, there are several farms located in different parts of the township.

"The mines which have heretofore been very productive are situated principally on sections 2, 3, 10, 11 and 14 but are now many abandoned as they are thought to be not worth working."

Field notes sometimes offer glimpses into the day-to-day lives of the survey teams, who carried their provisions and camped outdoors. Many of the surveys were completed during winter months, when wetlands were frozen and deciduous trees were clear of leaves. The surveyor who finished the south boundary of Township 11 North, Range 22 East, dated his remarks, in customary fashion, December 25, 1833, but added just below "Christmas." He went on to continue his survey work well into January. Then as now, Wisconsin's cold weather could reach into late spring. When Lucius Lyon finished a page for the exterior survey of Township 9 North, Range 1 East and 1 West he wrote:

Over the years researchers and scholars have used these field notes for a variety of purposes from investigating property holdings to writing regional studies. In the late 1940s and early 1950s geographers plotted 19th-century tree cover in Wisconsin using observations from the field notes. The resulting map "Original Vegetation of Wisconsin" has become a classic research tool itself. Local historians, too, may find information found in the surveyors' field notes especially useful in helping to understand the 19th-century landscape and patterns of settlement.

The surveyors' field notes comprise Archives Series 701. They are available on microfilm for use at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison or by appointment at any of the Area Research Centers. They may also be ordered through interlibrary loan. The exterior survey notes fill nine reels of microfilm; the interior surveys span 56 reels. In order to identify the appropriate reels, researchers will need to know the township and range survey coordinates of the township in which they are interested. Using that information, reference archivists can find the applicable notes. The original surveyors' field notebooks still exist and are kept by the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands in Madison.

Researchers may also find copies of the field notes at the county level. At the turn of the 20th century each county in Wisconsin received handwritten copies of the notebooks applicable to that particular county. Some counties have retained the notes. Researchers may wish to contact the register of deeds or county surveyor to see if the copies still exist for the county in which they are interested.

Two major sources were used for this article: "A Guide to the Land Records at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin" by Michael Edmonds and Order Upon the Land: The U.S. Rectangular Land Survey and the Upper Mississippi Country by Hildegard Binder Johnson. Order Upon the Land may be borrowed through interlibrary loan. Published in 1976, the book offers fascinating details about the development and implementation of the U.S. Rectangular Land Survey with many Wisconsin examples.

The author would like to thank Gerry Strey and Rob Nurre for reading drafts of this article and offering their comments.