Land helped compensate Revolutionary War veterans
After the end of the Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania lawmakers found themselves in a bind: no money to pay the veterans of the conflict and vast tracts of land it had acquired from the Native American Six Nations in the Purchase of 1784.
According to the U.S. Park Service, the Purchase, which was land west of the Allegheny River and north of the Ohio River, pushed Pennsylvania to its present north and west borders.
The State Legislature was quick to make use of this new land to relieve its money troubles.
During the war, soldiers in the Continental Army were paid by Congress with paper money known as Continental Currency. But, by the end of the war, the currency was virtually worthless.
Instead, the soldiers to whom Pennsylvania owed money were issued depreciation certificates that could be used to buy land in the newly acquired territory.
In addition, the state also had promised land to soldiers from Pennsylvania who took part in the fight against the British.
According to the original documents at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Land Records, this donation program was designed to induce men to stay in service during the war. Each soldier was to receive a bounty, or donation, of land consisting of 200, 250, 400 or 500 acres depending on the veteran’s rank.
Also, soldiers who received pay in the depreciated currency would be offered so-called depreciation certificates that could be used to purchase land in the Commonwealth.
Pennsylvania could pay the veterans in land instead of hard currency and the soldiers could homestead their acreage and push back the frontier.
However, carving out parcels of land depended on surveying the territory and creating maps or plats. Surveyors would have to plunge into the wilderness and bring back an accurate layout of the terrain.
Surveying was a respected skill in colonial society. George Washington was a surveyor for a time in Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, Washington, commissioned a battalion of surveyors and geographers to map the terrain ahead of his army. Washington knew a knowledge of the terrain and location of roads, fords and other aspects of the land was vital to effectively move his colonial army and wage war.
According to the Colonial Surveyor website, colonial surveyors established land boundaries employing a magnetic compass (called a circumferentor) mounted on a staff to determine horizontal angles and direction, and a Gunter’s chain to measure distance. Surveyors also used a plane table or drawing table to draft maps directly in the field and leveling tools and vertical poles for marking.
The Colonial Brewer website reports the compass was mounted on a base which extended into two arms set opposite each other. At each end of the arms were sighting vanes made up of an oval and a narrow slit with a thin wire or horsehair stretched over the oval to provide a precision sighting, The surveyor sighted the compass by peering through the slit on one end and lining up the horsehair in the oval of the other vane with a target in the field.
While the compass determined the bearing of the survey line, the Gunter’s Chain, a standardized 66-foot chain of 100 metal links, was used to measure distance. Two strong men were needed to work the chain because it had to be stretched tight. A sagging chain threw the measurement of distance off. At the end of the day, the surveyor turned the notes and sketches into a simple map. Later those notes and crude maps would be turned into official boundary maps.
The basic unit of land measurement is the acre which is 10 square chains. Eighty chain lengths equaled one mile. In cities where the plats were square measuring square chains is straightforward, but what if boundaries follow a stream or to the non-straight line?
According to the Colonial Brewer website, surveyors had to know at least the rudiments of plane geometry (areas of squares, triangles, circles) but the mechanics of making these computations in an era when all work had to be done by hand made reckoning the area of an irregular plot of land complex and tedious. Surveyors did have computational aids such as Gunter’s Rule, a wooden rule with a linear and logarithmic scale allowing basic multiplication, division, addition and subtraction to be made using calipers.
According to Colonial Surveyor website, surveyors learned to see land as a linear jigsaw puzzle. When preparing a survey, the surveyors constructed perpendiculars, proportionally divided lines and reduced irregular polygons into triangles. These skills coupled with basic arithmetic allowed surveyors to adjust their field measurements to account for the curvature of the earth, calculate the area of irregular shapes, discover land elevations and scale surveys to fit a map. Elite surveyors paired these skills with observations of the stars to find a meridian line, calculate latitude and find the altitude and zenith of any star in the night sky.
A survey crew, including chain carriers and ax men to clear trees and brush, would travel through the wilderness, measuring distances and bearings and preparing maps and property plats.
Surveying was a seasonal task and was a profession that contributed to the livelihood of men who were also farmers, millers, craftsmen and bureaucrats. Surveyors learned under apprenticeships from fathers and uncles or were taught by private instructors. Many were self-taught in spite of the range of skills required.
Surveying might have been a respected profession, but it was also a dangerous one. Much the surveying was done in the fall and winter months after the harvests were in and fallen leaves left better sightlines. The surveying crews worked in harsh weather through often nearly impassable terrains and faced attacks by wild animals and Native Americans.
And the dangers weren’t confined to the wilds of the Pennsylvania woods. Surveyors were often unable or unwilling to meet the exacting or, in some cases, unethical expectations of their employers. Employers were willing to forge survey warrants, bribe chain carriers and surveyors and issue death threats in order to acquire or enlarge their land claims.
Surveyors using their compasses and chains began carving the Depreciation Lands which covered much of what would become Butler County into lots.
According to the Bureau, the Donation Lands were immediately north of the so-called Depreciation Lands and west of the Allegheny River. It included parts of the future counties of Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Lawrence, Mercer and Venango counties as well as north and northeast Butler County. The northern boundary between the Depreciation and Donation Lands passed from east to west almost centrally through the future Butler County and was about four miles north of the future county seat of Butler
The Donation Lands were divided into 10 surveying districts with 2,570 lots totaling over 550,000 acres. Lots were distributed by a lottery system.
Surveyors also laid out what would become Butler County itself.
According to the 1909 “History of Butler and Butler County Pa.”, in 1800 the State Legislature created Butler County on March 12. Named for General Richard Butler who was killed in the Battle of Wabash River on Nov. 4, 1791, when the Northwest Confederacy of Native Americans overwhelmed American Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s forces, the new county was bounded by Venango County to the north, Armstrong County to the east, Allegheny County to the south and Beaver, Lawrence and Mercer Counties to the west.
The county encompassed 814 miles or 529,960 acres. In 1801, commissioners were appointed to establish the county lines. The history records Samuel Rippey, Harry Evans, John McBride as surveyors and Beatty Quinn as their axeman.
After the surveyors made their report, the Legislature appointed Isaac Weaver, John Hamilton, Thomas Martin and Presley Carr Lane to locate the site of the future county seat within four miles from the center of the county which was also named Butler.
By 1855, surveyors determined the limits of Butler County to be: beginning at the mouth of Buffalo Creek at Freeport following a line west 23 miles to a corner of Alexander’s District on the west side of Beaver County, then a line north 23 miles to where Muddy Creek and Slippery Rock Creek united, then along the Mercer County line north to 15 degrees east, then a line 15 miles to a corner near Harrisville, then east 15 miles to a corner near the Allegheny River near Emlenton, then south 30 miles along the Armstrong County line to the beginning at the mouth of Buffalo Creek.
