BEGINING OF SURVEYING

"Surveying is the art of determining the relative positions of prominent points and other objects on the surface of the ground and making a graphical delineation of the included area. The general principles on which it is conducted are in all instances the same; certain measures are made on the ground and corresponding measures are protracted on paper, on a scale which is fixed at whatever fraction of the natural scale may be most appropriate in each instance. The method of operation varies with the magnitude and importance of the survey, which may embrace a vast empire or be restricted to a small plot of land. All surveys rest primarily on linear measures for direct determinations of distance; but these are usually largely supplemented by angular measures, to enable distances to be deduced by the principles of geometry which cannot be conveniently measured over the surface of the ground where it is hilly or broken." (Americanized Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1895, vol. Ix, p; 5635)

Included in the Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 were provisions for the surveying of the Northwest Territory. Only seven ranges (rows of townships, one township or six miles wide, running north and south) in eastern Ohio were surveyed under the Ordinance of 1785. The lands of the Ohio Company grant, just west of these seven ranges, were surveyed on a system completely different than the rectilinear system (townships of 36 square miles, divided into one-square-mile sections) mandated by the Ordinance of 1785.

Following the addition of territory under the Treaty of Greenville (1795), this territory was surveyed along the rectilinear system; the section-numbering scheme was reworked in 1796, with section numbers beginning with 1 at the northeast corner, numbered consecutively to the west to 6, back to the east in the next row for sections 7 to 12, and alternating west to east through the rest of the section, ending with section 36 in the southeast corner of the township.

This section-numbering system was continued through the surveys of the remainder of the Northwest Territory. To aid the surveyors, principal meridian lines from which other surveying lines were measured were established, the first of which was at the eastern border of Indiana Territory. The meridian system and the rectangular system of townships were used not only in the Old Northwest but in all the U.S. territories (except Texas) surveyed thereafter. (Buley, The Old Northwest, 1:115-118).