Deakins Survey (Locating Military Lots in Western Maryland)--Lessons Learned

The next paragraph is a long introduction.

Most of the branches of my family tree can be traced back within about four generations to specific locations in Europe. Details can be viewed most easily by following the links from my profile at the single-tree WikiTree. My maternal grandmother's branch, however, is much more complicated. My grandmother was born in Frostburg, Maryland, as was her mother. Their maternal root, Ellen (Powers) Brooks, is firmly planted at a specific location in Ireland. But several years after Ellen's childhood family moved to Frostburg she married George Brooks. George, my great-great-grandfather, has deep roots in the western panhandle of Maryland, going back well into the 1700s. My family knew almost nothing about the George Brooks branch before I started researching about 25 years ago. It turns out that there are multiple great-somebody connections scattered on both sides of the Old National Pike from Frostburg west. In recent years during my trips back East, genealogy has been an excuse to spend time exploring and enjoying the scenery and history of the mountains, particularly the mountains of Western Maryland. So this long introduction has been an explanation for my interest in locating military lots on modern topographic maps.

The Western Maryland Historical Library has a web page devoted to the Deakins Survey. Hereinafter that page and its links will be the Library website. I won't repeat the information and explanation provided at the Library website. Their main page has a map of the military lots for Garrett County. Multiple horizontal and vertical lines divide that map into small rectangular sections. Clicking anywhere on that map will zoom in on only the small rectangle clicked on. Regarding the Garrett map, the Library website provides a link to the "Full Military Land Map (without lines)". That full image can be downloaded and viewed at full resolution in its entirety offline. But that won't be necessary for following this post. I have cropped the full downloaded image and kept only a northwest corner of the map. Here is that portion.

Deakins Map Redrawn, Cropped, northwest corner of Garrett County

You may want to download this northwest corner map and look at it offline while continuing to read this post. The Library website explains that the map for Garrett County was redrawn from an earlier map (the Veatch map) that covers both today's Garrett County and today's Allegany County east to Cumberland. The Library website includes a link to the Veatch map, which is a color image. I would suggest instead viewing a black and white version of the Veatch map. A link to the B&W version is provided at a web page discussing use of the Deakins Survey in researching the Corn (Korn) family. The B&W version is described there more correctly as a grayscale version. The Corn website also provides additional information and discussion about the Deakins Survey. For the purpose of this blog, I have cropped the B&W version of the Veatch map and kept only the same northwest corner (also cropping some notations on the northern and western margins). Here it is.

Deakins Map, Original Veatch version converted to grayscale, Cropped

The reason the original Veatch map is in color is because some military lots were surveyed with settlers already present. Those lots were then offered for sale to the original settlers, and so they were not available for distribution to soldiers. A red shading was applied to the original settler lots on the Veatch map, often making the lot numbers difficult to read. In the gray scale version the numbers are still somewhat smeared and faded, but a bit easier to read. My g-g-grandfather George's g-grandfather, Thomas Humbertson, was one of the original-settler purchasers in the Frostburg area.

On the two maps above there are large swaths covered by fairly uniform grids of rectangular, not quite square, lots. Similar rectangular lots appear in many areas of the rest of the survey. A starting point for locating specific lots is to understand that the rectangular shape of the lots is related to their areal size, 50 acres. One square mile is 640 acres, and 50 does not divide evenly into 640. However an old measurement unit is a perch, or rod, which is equal to 16.5 feet. A rectangular lot that is 80 perches (1320 feet) by 100 perches (1650 feet) is exactly 50 acres.

Ultimately the goal is to approximately locate these lots on a modern topographic map. Most of the area in the two maps above is covered by the USGS Friendsville topographic map. (An electronic version of the Friendsville map can be downloaded for free from the USGS Store, when the government is not shut down. The latest version of the traditional form of the Friendsville topo is the 1993 version.) I have a paper copy of the Friendsville topo that I bought from the USGS about 25 years ago. Since I know that the paper copy is printed at a scale of 1:24,000, I have drawn on a separate little sheet of paper a grid of rectangular military lots at 1:24,000, like this.

I overlay my little grid on the topo map and see how it fits (a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle). Even when lots have irregular shapes, I know that the area enclosed needs to be the same area as my hand-drawn rectangles. You can confirm the shape and size of the rectangular lots by looking at the B&W Veatch map above. The circles along the north and west boundaries are one mile apart. Four lots added along their short sides is exactly one mile. Four lots added along their long sides equals the length of five lots added along their short sides, etc. It's easy to measure mileage south from the Mason-Dixon line. Just count the number of short sides and divide by four. The complication is the first row of lots, along the M-D line. Those lots appear wider in the long direction, and so must be narrower in the short direction. I estimate the inflation factor in the long direction as 7/6, and so the reduction in the short direction 6/7, so the north-south distance of the top row is approximately 0.21 mile instead of 0.25 mile.

Let's see how this works for an example. My 4th-great uncle (i.e, George Brooks' uncle) Noah Humberson acquired several parcels of land in the Blooming Rose area beginning about 1860. His 1860 purchase is described in part as including military lots 2842, 2843 and 2844. The lot numbers are easier to read on the first (Deakins Redrawn) map above. The irregular shape of lot 2844 is better depicted on the Veatch B&W map. On either map you can see that the three lots partially wrap around the north end of the Blooming Rose tract. Consider the corner where the three lots meet. How far south of the state line (the Mason-Dixon line) is this corner? Count north 10 lots along their short side. Ten divided by four is 2.5 miles. Add the top row estimate, 0.21 mile, to get a total of 2.71 miles as the approximate answer. When I measure this distance south, and consider the approximate location of the Blooming Rose tract, I find a point on the southwest edge of a short ridge labeled on the topo map as Emberson Hill. I have not been able to locate a description of the Blooming Rose tract, but I suspect that the north end of the tract follows the Emberson Hill ridge line for a short distance, cutting into what would have been a perfectly rectangular lot 2844. To compensate, lot 2844 then extends south of the ridge line.

Regarding the east-west positioning of military lots on a modern topo, I repeatedly fall for the notion when looking across the top of the Veatch map that the numbers labeling the circles indicate mileage along the Mason-Dixon (hereinafter M-D) line. But that is false, it does not fit. The circles are one mile apart, but they are not the exact M-D mileage.

In 1859 a brother of Noah, Azariah Humberston, purchased military lots 2936 and 2939, and a western part of military lot 3330. These lots are located just south and southeast of the circle labeled 196 on the Veatch map. Comparing with the Deakins redrawn map, you can see that this is an example where the digit six has been miscopied as a zero. (Miscopying is mentioned at the Library website.) So lot 2936 appears incorrectly as a second lot 2930 on the Deakins redrawn map. The excerpt below from the Friendsville topo includes the area of Azariah's purchase.

The total north-south distance on this excerpt is about 1.5 miles. Maryland state route 42, near the left edge, continues north to Markleysburg. The other north-south road crossing the state line, a secondary road a little right of center, is identified by google maps as Guard Road. I'm reluctant to draw Azariah's lots on this map because I can't be sure of the precise location. I know that the north boundary of lots 2936 and 2939 is only about 1/5 mile south of the state line. I play with my hand drawn grid of lots overlaid on the paper version of the map. Notice that some features are colored purple. Those features are photo revisions. Notice the photorevised road that veers to the south off of Guard Road, curves west, descends a steep hill via a switchback, and arrives at a photorevised lake. I believe that Azariah's lots 2936 and 2939 encompass most of these photorevisions, with room to spare on the west. How did I arrive at this east-west position? For one thing, it fits with the earlier positioning on Emberson Hill. It also fits with the position of the Youghiogheny River near Friendsville. (The drainage pattern sketched on the Deakins Map Redrawn provides a broad perspective on the area location, but details of the stream courses are in many places very wrong. At Friendsville, which developed in part from the land patent labeled "Look Sharp", the approximate location of the river is determined by the lot boundaries.)

It is possible to locate the M-D mileage on this and other topo maps for western Maryland, but it's complicated. Looking at the topo excerpt above along the M-D line we see the number 220 (a bit east of highway 42) and the number 218 (near the top of a hill that lies north of my estimated location of Azariah's lots). These are monument numbers, not distances. The numbers are from a list of monuments installed or repaired or merely noted during a resurvey of the M-D line conducted in the years 1901-1903. The report of the resurvey is available as a 23 MB pdf download from the Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership website. The list of monuments appears on pages 83 through 101 of the report. For the first (eastern) 132 miles of the M-D line the list of monuments is almost entirely the milestones. Monument number 136 is milestone number 132, indicating only 3 extra resurvey monuments in that distance (resurvey monument no. 1 being M-D's initial monument). Partially quoting from the resurvey's description of number 136, Near the eastern base of Sideling Hill ... the most western of the [milestone] monuments planted by Mason and Dixon... West of this point M-D installed makeshift monuments of rock cairns or mounds of earth.

Moving ahead in the list of monuments, arriving at monuments in the area of the topo map above: 217. Small mound of stones, with a good sized tree growing in it, on the east side of [Guard Road] ... This marks the 196th mile of Mason and Dixon's measurement, 193 miles from the initial monument ... 218. Stone monument in fence line on the high bare ridge one-fifth of a mile west of the preceding mound ... The distance on the topo map from the east side of Guard Road to the number 218 is slightly more than, but about, one-fifth of a mile. As a consequence of my east-west fitting described previously, I estimate that the point labeled 196 on the Veatch map is actually the 196.35 mile of Mason and Dixon's measurement. The 0.35 mile adjustment is a bit more than the width of one of the rectangular 50 acre lots. This adjustment should work anywhere along the northern border of the Veatch map.

(This paragraph and the final paragraph discuss the eastern, beyond Garrett, part of the Deakins Survey. The small portion of the Veatch map displayed above will no longer be of use. You may want to download the relevant maps from elsewhere, or you can just imagine.) Moving 27 miles to the east, and quoting again from the resurvey report, 179. Stone monument in mound of earth on the western edge of the summit of Big Savage Mountain. This mound marked the 169th mile of Mason and Dixon's measurement ... This is the most eastern of these 'mile mounds.' (Note that I've calculated the distance from Guard Road as 27 miles by subtracting the 169th mile from the 196th mile. The difference in monument numbers is 38.) This monument and the next 11 resurvey monuments to the east (numbers 178-168, extending over about 8 miles) are all labeled with their numbers on either the Frostburg or the Cumberland topo maps. None of the monuments 178-168 are at locations that could have been mile mounds. In other words, the resurvey would have determined that they had arrived at locations where there could have been mile mounds. But finding no evidence that M-D had marked the spots, the resurvey also did not mark or remark upon those spots. Instead the resurvey installed stone monuments at more prominent locations, such as beside a north-south road or on a mountain ridgetop. Most of those resurvey monument locations had remnant evidence of having been marked by M-D.

In the resurvey's listing of monuments, after number 136 (the most western of the milestone monuments planted by M-D) all the way to number 179 (the most eastern of the M-D mile mounds), the monument descriptions for 137 through 178 say nothing about the M-D mileage. So even though the monuments covering the easternmost seven miles of the Deakins survey, numbers 162-178, can be located precisely on a modern topo map, there are no associated mileages in the monument descriptions. There is nothing for the estimated adjustment to be applied to. But it should be possible to extrapolate east from monument 179. For example, applying the estimated adjustment to the point at monument 179, the 169th M-D mile, yields 168.65 mile for the Veatch map (i.e., Veatch 169 is estimated 0.35 miles west of monument 179). On the Frostburg topo I measure 1.65 miles east from resurvey monument 179 and so arrive at a point estimated as the point 167 found on the northern edge of the Veatch map. This point is close to the eastern edge of the Frostburg topo, and is two miles north of Mount Savage. If the locations of the military lots surveyed in the vicinity of Mount Savage were not already known, steps analogous to those outlined above could be used to approximately locate those lots.