First "Exemplar" Township Map Drawn for the Oregon Territory, Survey of an Isolated Township, Plus

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American Historical Ephemera & Photography, I...

By Cowan's Auctions

Jun 26, 2020

Set Reminder 2020-06-26 10:00:00 2020-06-26 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : American Historical Ephemera & Photography, Including African Americana:Premier Auction https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/cowans/american-historical-ephemera-photography-including-african-americana-premier-auction-5208
Cowan's Auctions is delighted to present the June 26 American Historical Ephemera and Photography Auction, including 55 lots devoted to the African American experience, over 175 lots dating from the Civil War Era, and more than 60 lots documenting life in the American West. Cowan's Auctions dawnie@cowans.com

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• Lot Description
  Lot of 9. Manuscript map, the first "exemplar township map drawn for the Oregon Territory, Township N^o,26 North Range N^o 2 West Willamette Meridian. Unsigned, n.d., ca 1851 16 x 15 in. With related contemporaneous congressional publications and modern reprints and reference books. Also includes related printed township map Diagram B: Township No. 6 Range No. 34 East of the Principal Meridian, Montana Surveyed by Walter W. de Lacy, Aug. 6-16, 1880.
  
  When the Donation Land Act was passed in the fall of 1850, there was a backlog of homesteaders seeking to prove their existing land claims dating back to 1846 or earlier, resulting in a huge demand to establish a meridian line and subsequent baseline to begin the arduous task of establishing and surveying townships in the Pacific Northwest. In 1851, the first Surveyor General of the Oregon Territory, Jonathan B. Preston, arrived in Oregon City with a congressional mandate and orders from the Grand Land Office (GLO) to initiate and complete a general survey of lands for the benefit of the public, to insure titles, validate land claims, and organize the property holding system in the freshly opened Oregon Territory. Preston, however, needed to answer several questions regarding how the surveyors would know what to draw, how to draw natural features in relation to boundaries of Donation Land Claims and more.
  
  To help address these questions, Preston appears to have brought with him a handful of copies of a small book published by the GLO, titled Instructions to Surveyors General of Oregon (ISG). The Manual had been composed to provide just these sorts of guidelines to “in the field” surveyors, who sought to work under contract with the GLO, on the protocols and methods for running land surveys in compliance with federal standards. The ISG Manual, also included carefully prepared diagrams and example maps for the surveyor’s reference. Yet because it was necessary that the surveys be completely new, and independently performed, the sample maps were drawn largely from imagination - and so they do not represent any actual place or township in Oregon.
  
  The manuscript map offered here, titled Township 25 North Range 2 West, corresponds to imaginary survey field notes printed in the ISG manual, for a fictional surveyor named “Robert Acres” who worked with make-believe chainmen, “Peter Long and John Short,” fictional axemen “George Sharp and Adam Dull,” and so forth. The manuscript map itself shows a composite of topographical features which the GLO anticipated Preston’s contract surveyors would encounter in Oregon. Some “real” features are mixed with the imaginary ones: for instance, the “Chickeeles River” (an early spelling of the Chehalis River).
  
  The actual 25 North Range 2 West township map takes in a large amount of the Hood Canal in Washington State and is just west of downtown Seattle by about 36 miles (Seattle is 25 North, Range 2 East). In 1855, there would be published a second “Manual of Instructions for the Surveyor General of Oregon” with - in the appendices - a folded, printed map similar to that offered here, but this new map was larger, and included significantly more details, than this preliminary, pioneering map.
  
  Also includes:
  
  Petition of Johnson Price and Alexander R. McKee, Praying A Grant of Land in Oregon, On Condition that they Cause it to be Settled. May 18, 1848. 30th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, Miscellaneous, No. 142.
  
  Memorial of the Legislature of Oregon. [1851] 31st Congress, 24 Session, Miscellaneous, No. 5.
  
  Reports of Surveyors General of California and Oregon. Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, Transmitting Annual Reports of the surveyors General of California and Oregon. [1853]. 32d Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. No. 14.
  
  Instructions to the Surveyor General of Oregon 1851. [Rancho Cordoba, CA]: Roy Minnick, 1974.
  
  MINNICK, Roy, ed. A Collection of Original Instructions to Surveyors of the Public Lands 1815-1881. Rancho Cordova, CA: n.d., [ca 1981].
  
  ATWOOD, Kay. Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855. Blacksburg, VA: The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, [2008].

  Condition

  Annual Report (1876) - 5 large quires lacking from rear; amounting ex-libris from Governor's Guard, Lansing, MI, faded covers, heavy wear to extremities and spine, rear interior hinge broken. 
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