Elijah Pope And The Hurricane

The government surveyors of the early nineteenth century had to work quickly in order to create the maps necessary to process the land claims of all the people moving in. They worked very hard and all the time. They worked on Christmas day. They worked on July 4th. Sometime in 1809, Deputy Surveyor Elijah Pope worked through a very strong storm, possibly a hurricane. On the left side of the page he records his distance in numbers of chains. His task is to go forty chains and set his half mile post, then forty more to set a corner post and record the bearing or "witness" trees. He has to keep the line absolutely straight. The surveyors made notes about the lay of the land, whether it was flat or rolling, the dominant vegetation and soil quality. Very rarely did they make any other comments. But on this page, Elijah can’t help but note how slowly the storm was moving through. After setting the quarter section post and recording the bearing trees at forty chain links, he notes the 30 chain point: "Pass out of hurricane." In the column where the chain measurement should go he writes “oh oh!” and then: “It is extremely remarkable that this reigning torrent of air seems to have lost much of its rapidity in passing from the pine hills on the W. to the east side of the Magachitto. Tho it appears here to be gathering much of its former violence.” Still he presses on to the corner of sections 1,2,11 and 12 and records two pines as bearing trees.


On the final page of the survey, below his signature and those of the chain carriers, and in a much calmer hand, possibly days later at a table inside a building somewhere, he writes:
“Immortal hope is made a squatter
I wade knee deep in mud +water”

I have read hundreds and hundreds of these pages in my effort to locate pre-European settlement prairies. With Google Earth I can locate their positions on the grid of Township, Range and section lines and observe present land uses. The work is interesting and not that hard. It is tedious at times but on occasion I do encounter an interesting story like this one. Stories in the original manuscripts that few people have ever seen.