A look at the surveyors
One might imagine that the territorial expansion of the United States from an eastern seaboard nation to a transcontinental union of 48 continuous states might include an historical record with a cast of famous surveyors. While I imagine most contemporary historians might pass at a chance to meet and converse with the leading surveyors in America today, I certainly doubt that any would pass the chance to dine with the top surveyors of early America.
In this unit, I may include surveyors as topics of study because of their accomplishments in mapping territory in colonial America or in the early United States. Students may want to explore the life of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Banneker, and even Ben Franklin. Each was involved in rather important work as surveyors, community planners and observers of natural phenomena. Washington served as a surveyor before becoming a military leader. Yet, as Wilford points out, Washington drew on his surveying skills at times to carry out his duties as a military leader. This included his inaugural mission to inform the French to abandon disputed claims with British Virginia. Thomas Jefferson helped survey the southern colonies as well as design and build his own house Monticello. He also designed the University of Virginia campus. As president, he was responsible for acquiring the Louisiana Territory and organizing the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore and map the Louisiana territory and more. The intellectually gifted Benjamin Banneker worked as a surveyor in the planning of Washington D.C. Ben Franklin is believed to be the first man to map the Gulf Stream current. He is believed to have studied and illustrated the current in his trips to England prior to the Revolutionary War.
While the currents of educational, political, and social practice of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries consistently point to men as surveyors, I expected to find some accounts of women involved in surveying. Aside from Sacagawea's contributions to the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a guide, I unfortunately found nothing. This is an area worth further exploration as women were crucial contributors to the settling of the West.
The Mapping of One Place over Time
While techniques for surveying and mapping land have evolved with new technologies, the rhetorical power of maps has perhaps remained the same. Striding, the Gunter's chain, and the sextant as tools of measurement have been replaced by pinpoint laser devices and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. Paper as a medium to draw maps has been replaced by digital images. Nonetheless, images of a single parcel of land over time primarily still convey the simple message of ownership. In Maps in Our Lives, an online exhibition of maps sponsored by the Library of Congress and the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM), the history of surveying is exemplified through the presentation of maps of a single parcel of land over time (8). The prized parcel, viewed from representations rendered from 1760 to 2004, showcases a parcel of land once surveyed and mapped by George Washington. The first image is a map of Mr. Clifton's Neck Land copied by George Washington in 1760. Washington surveyed this land after acquiring it and designed River Farm (the land is bordered by the Potomac River and Little Hunting Creek. His simple but exquisitely hand-drawn map (1766) titled, "A Plan of My Farm on Little Hunting Creek and the Potomac" shows his organization of over 800 acres into four fields of approximately 200 acres each. The map includes a compass rose, the rivers, and illustrations of woods and pastures. The exhibit continues with survey maps showing the property in 1793, 1859, 1920, 1937, 1995, 1999, and concludes with an orthophotographic map of the area from 2004. The maps show the complexities of a land parcel being subdivided over time. In fact, the intensity, and density of the parcel become apparent from the earliest to latest images. Perhaps the exhibit's greatest message is that maps have come to mirror the sophisticated means by which we manage, control, and claim ownership to land.
A Tool of Persuasion
"A good propagandist knows how to shape opinion by manipulating maps. Political persuasion often concerns territorial claims, nationalities, national pride, borders, strategic positions, conquests, attacks, troop movements, defenses, spheres of influence, regional inequality, and other geographic phenomena conveniently portrayed cartographically" (Monmonier, 1996, p. 87).
The triumph of Manifest Destiny certainly involved the map as a tool of persuasion. While the Louisiana Purchase secured land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, Lewis and Clark's map of 1810 suggests that the United States would look more complete if the stretch of land from the Rocky Mountains to the coast were incorporated. If Jefferson's instruction for Lewis and Clark to continue to the coast later allowed the United States to lay claim to Oregon territory, then Lewis and Clark's Map certainly made this claim a more visual reality. One can easily imagine any early 19th century politician, businessman, or citizen looking at a map of the newly acquired territory included on Lewis and Clark's map and wondering, "Why should the United States stop acquiring land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with such little space left to gain?" Whether purposely done or not, the map certainly shaped opinion that the United States was more complete if extended to the Pacific Ocean.
The relationships of maps and Manifest Destiny perhaps have some origins in the land claims of Colonial America. Maps had been used in Colonial America to visually portray the claim of long tracts of land from the Atlantic as far west as land existed (Colonial charters are as bold as they are ambiguous on this topic). Such was the case for Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The original English Land claim for Virginia included practically the entire Atlantic seaboard and all lands west. The French initially claimed the same lands. The Charter of 1609 for Virginia claimed the Atlantic from present day North Carolina to New Jersey and all lands west. Massachusetts and Connecticut made claim to tracts of land that run west. Essentially these claims pushed their western border as far west as the Pacific Ocean. The importance of the map in the territorial claim game was its ability to visually and selectively show your claim. As one can infer from the written language of the Connecticut Charter, one's relying solely on the written language in the charter left much room for interpretation.
- And Know Ye further, That We, of Our abundant Grace, certain Knowledge, and mere Motion, have given, granted, and confirmed, and by these Presents for Us, our Heirs and Successors, do give, grant and confirm unto the said Governor and Company, and their Successors, all that Part of Our Dominions in New-England in America, bounded on the East by Narraganset-River, commonly called Narraganset-Bay, where the said River falleth into the Sea; and on the North by the Line of the If Massachusetts-Plantation; and on the South by the Sea; and in Longitude as the Line of the Massachusetts-Colony, running from East to West, That is to say, From the said Narraganset-Bay on the East, to the South Sea on the West Part, with the Islands thereunto adjoining, together with all firm Lands, Soils, Grounds, Havens, Ports, Rivers, Waters, Dishings, Mines, Minerals, precious Stones, Quarries, and all and singular other Commodities, Jurisdictions, Royalties, Privileges, Franchises, Preheminences, and Hereditaments whatsoever, within the said Tract, Bounds, Lands, and Islands aforesaid, or to them or any of them belonging.
- Charter of Connecticut (9)
Connecticut, Virginia, and Massachusetts as well as the rest of the original thirteen states resolved most of the competing land claims among themselves and with Great Britain as a result of the settlements that ended the Revolutionary War (Treaty of Paris). Prior events included states such as Connecticut actually fighting fellow countrymen in disputed territory over the land. Much of Connecticut's land dispute occurred with people of Pennsylvania over land in Pennsylvania. In this case the rhetorical power of the map was used ineffectively to convince the opposing party to yield. Instead, the claims achieved the provocation of open hostility by both disputed parties.
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