Boustrophedonical – Part Two

Part two of a two-part episode, on this edition of Lanstories, host David Siwik continues his exploration of the namesake of Meridian Township, the land survey of Michigan conducted during the territorial and early statehood period of Michigan history.  In this part two, Host Siwik takes a deep dive into the methods by which early land surveyors conducted their craft and the long-term implications for the land survey and sales systems that came out of this period of Michigan’s past.  Other topics explored include the impact the land survey had on Michigan becoming a state, including the historical significance of the boustrophedonical section number system both short and long-term.

Related Podcasts: Lanstories - Indigenous Mid-Michigan Lands, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Tags/Keywords: Michigan History, United States History, Northwest Territory, Ordinance of 1784, Land Ordinance of 1785, Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Township, Township Section, Boustrophedonical Section Number System, Michigan Territory, Statehood

From Lansing Community College. This is LCC Connect and this is Land Stories with me, David Siwik.

Each episode explores a different topic, such as the people, business, neighborhoods, communities, buildings and other phenomena that make up the history of our college and our region. We tell stories and in doing so, we connect the past to the present.

This episode of Land Stories will pick up where the prior episode, prior chronologically speaking, left off. And that would be in a place called Defiance, Ohio. And don't run away from your listening device just yet.

This still is Land Stories and we still talk about things related to the history of Michigan's capital region in and around Lansing. But we have to deviate sometimes to get a full picture of what we're talking about as it relates to the Lansing region.

And this is one such episode, just like the past episode was, because we are actually talking about how a place called Meridian Township happened to get its name, the name Meridian and the name Township, actually, because we are going to be talking about the establishment of the township system on this episode of Land Stories because we are talking about the Great Michigan Land Survey. And the reason why Meridian Township is in the Michigan Capital Region is called so.

And that is because of a survey line that was laid down many years ago, about 200 years ago or so, actually, that formed one of two survey lines that the entire state of Michigan would eventually be surveyed from. And that process was the great land survey system that took place in Michigan and had a tremendous impact on the settlement of the state.

The same is true of all the other parts of the United States that were surveyed under a similar system. And that is why it is worthy, even beyond the inquiry into why Meridian Township, Michigan is named.

So to explore this very important moment in Michigan's past, last episode we talked about some broad conceptual ideas here that led to the land that we now call the state of Michigan being surveyed.

And the American Revolution resulted in many things, including the land of Michigan becoming part of that New country called the United States of America. And so Michigan, then, is part of that new country. And there are many other lands that have been brought into the new, newly formed republic.

The leaders of that newly formed republic determined they wanted to settle, and that meant having people move on to it.

And the mindset that people were operating under at the time was not all that different than the mindset that people operate under nowadays when it comes to using land. And land at that time was looked at as something that you really could not survive without having.

In other words, you nowadays can take a look at the economy here in a place called or a place like Michigan. And we can see there are a lot of ways that people can make a living.

And very few people who live in Michigan right now actually make their living off the physical property that they own. Most people go to work in a job that is related eventually to the economic activity that takes place on large tracts of land.

People did not think you could really make a living unless you had land to farm. It was an agrarian economy, by and large, at the time. And so when people wanted to set places to live, they had to have land.

And so when Michigan becomes part of the United States, Congress immediately sets forth a directive to foster settlement into Michigan and settlement in all kinds of other areas of the middle. What we now know is the middle part of the United States, but what at the time was actually called the northwest.

And that gets us to that point where it is time to survey the lands of Michigan. We left off the last episode where we are right now, actually. And we are, believe it or not, at Least in our minds, we should be.

We are in Defiance, Ohio. Defiance, Ohio isn't in Michigan, of course. It's actually a few miles south of the Michigan Ohio border.

But Defiance, Ohio is roughly a perfectly straight line south of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. And when the Michigan land survey started, surveyors had to establish a point where the land could be surveyed out with.

And that point became the location of the starting point of Michigan's land survey. In order to determine where this point was, people at the time got maps out and they said, okay, we're going to have to draw two lines.

One is going to go from the north to the south. The other is going to go from either the west to the east or the east to the west.

And where those two points meet, we are going to create a grid from those two points.

And when the Northwest Territory was created out of all the lands that the United States acquired from Britain in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions of North America as a result of the Revolutionary War War, Congress created the Northwest Territory to determine what would happen with all those lands. And out of the Northwest Territory we get the means by which a territory would be organized and eventually admitted into the Union as a state.

And as had been the overarching design of that ordinance, eventually smaller territories that became states of their own are carved out of that territory. Ohio was the first such political unit to emerge from the Northwest Territory. And it was.

But just to make sure, in the 20th century, Congress did formally admit Ohio into the Union as more of a ceremonial gesture than anything.

And hey, if this was an episode of Columbus Stories and we were talking all about the History of Ohio and the capital city of Ohio, which is Columbus, we would talk more about that, but guess what? It's not. We had to dip our toes down into the territory of Ohio for a few moments because we have to get to Defiance, Ohio.

But beyond that, we're not going to talk about Ohio much.

We do need to know, though, the establishment of the Ohio Territory and eventually the carving of the state of Ohio out of that Northwest Territory is the process that we want to focus on, because that's the process that all of the territories and states that emerge from the Northwest territory would also follow. So the great land survey system that became known as the Bostrophedonical, say that a few times. Bostrophedonico. Bostrophedonico.

The bostrophodontical section number system.

And by the way, that word is spelled B O, U, S T, R O, P H E, D O, N, I, C, A, L. And yes, I did look at that written down on a piece of paper before I recited that spelling to you.

But the Bostro Fedonico section numbering system is the public land survey system and the system of local government that emerges from this great survey that we've been talking about on this episode of Land Stories and the prior one chronologically, in the order that the episodes have been released.

And what this section number system did is it determined that the way all the lands would be surveyed out of the territory of the Northwest would be to establish grids, and from there survey the entire area in square mile units with the intent that several square mile units would be gathered to form townships, and that township system would be the basis by which all units of local government, or at least most of them, would eventually be established in the the territories out of the Northwest that eventually became states. So in Ohio, in Indiana, in Illinois, in Michigan, and in Wisconsin, those are the territories that became states out of the Northwest.

And all of those territories eventually follow the same survey system that started in Ohio. That's the Bostro fidenico section number system that happens to do with both surveying and governance.

So let's take a quick step back and look at those two terms, survey and governance, and see how they relate to all the land in Michigan being divided up so people could buy it and settle onto it.

And as we do so, the word meridian is going to enter into this picture, actually, as are some of the other general concepts and their very specific applications historically to people settling into Michigan. So first survey to survey land is to literally determine what exists on it. Where it exists and how big it is.

So land surveying has been around probably as long as people have built things.

One can study ancient structures around the world and learn a bit about how they were constructed by studying them and determined that most buildings, when they're built. Well, there was a site survey that was done because people need to figure out where the building they're going to build goes.

When you look at surveying a very large area of land, conceptually, it's sort of the same thing going on.

People are looking at a large area of land, and they're trying to get a sense of what that land looks like, because they want to do something with it.

And some of the earliest activity that took place in Michigan related to land surveying was actually for people looking for lumber. But more than that, much more than that, the land survey in Michigan was done with the intent that people would eventually move on to land and farm.

Farm it.

And the whole concept of homesteading and of people setting up for themselves a farm that could be both an independently run family business and also something that would support the family. This is a concept that really starts at this time period.

It's a very important part of the entire founding ideology of the middle part of the United States. The that would certainly include Michigan.

I mention it here because that second aspect that we want to consider beyond surveying is the governance aspect. And this is where the township system comes into play here.

And we're back to the Braustow fadonicold section numbering system, because once land surveyors started their grid, they then, as I mentioned a few moments ago, surveyed all the land in a carbon directions that emanate from that cross point that the survey started in square mile increments.

Those square mile increments would be grouped into groups of six, and that would form the local government unit that really the entire middle part of the United States would eventually be organized around. And it's the unit of the township.

So in Michigan and in most other territories and states that came out of the northwest territory, the bostro fodonical section numbering system looked like this. It was six miles square, and it still is, by the way, which means most townships are six miles from north to south and six miles from east to west.

And from Defiance, Ohio is where the land surveyors embarked on their great journey, their great effort to survey Michigan.

As I mentioned towards the beginning of the episode, Defiance, Ohio is important because the land survey had to be done both conceptually and in a very real sense. In other words, a map. If you look at a map, a map is a concept, it's an idea, it's representing something that is very real.

So when you look at a map, you're not actually looking at the area of land that the map depicts, but the map is very important for you to be able to determine where you are going on the area of land that the map depicts. So it turns into a question of process. If somebody wants to survey an area, they have to establish a survey grid.

How is that survey grid going to be established? Well, one needs a map to establish a survey grid. And there were maps that existed of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions of North America.

When this great land survey commenced, those maps weren't super accurate. The land surveyors would make them accurate because they eventually were to walk and physically be on all the land that they surveyed.

So using, albeit inaccurate, maps. Nonetheless, using maps is actually how the land surveyors would start. The maps they had gave them a general idea of where they were.

And so that's why determining even where the American and British Canadian border was in the early decades of the country's existence was, was a far more difficult process than one might imagine.

And when that determination happened, the St. Mary's river became the agreed upon point where the American and Canadian border would exist at the end of Lake superior. So the St. Mary's river, by the way, is what flows out of Lake Superior and it connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron. That is where Sault Ste.

Marie was located. The St. Mary's river, therefore, became the border between the United States and Canada. And it still is. There's a bridge that connects Sault Ste.

Marie was one town that people knew where it existed. And that more than anything, is why it was chosen as the northern terminus point for the survey line that would become known as the Meridian Line.

So if one gets a map out and draws a line straight south from Sault Ste. Marie, it eventually ends up in Defiance, Ohio.

And that therefore, is why the land Survey of Michigan started from There, because that is how they established the Michigan meridian. It is a line that goes from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Defiance, Ohio.

So when the great Michigan survey started, a server by the name of Benjamin Hull was hired to do the initial work of determining where that meridian line would meet a baseline, which was the horizontal line that would be drawn on a map surveyed in a very physical sense, by walking it on the ground. And then from that point on that meridian and baseline juncture is where the survey was to take place. And that is kind of what happened.

But there is an interesting twist to the story here.

So nowadays one can drive down Meridian Road in Ingham County, Michigan, and for some of the stretch of that road, one is driving right along that original Michigan meridian. Meridian survey line. That is, after all, why that road is called Meridian Road. And it's why Meridian Township is named Meridian Township.

And tangentially, that's why the Meridian Mall is called the Meridian Mall.

Anything you see with the word meridian on it or here with the word meridian on it in the Michigan capital region is because of the Meridian survey line. So once that meridian line is established, the baseline comes into existence through the process I just described.

And one would think, hey, this is great. We've got a nice precise point. A a as in one point. I emphasize that for a reason, because one would think that was the case, but actually it wasn't.

Here's why. When Benjamin Ho walked the land and made his initial mark, he did not make his marts very accurately.

And at the same time, he got interrupted because he had to do another job. And so he was pulled off the project and did not complete his mapping of where that initial baseline would take place.

So another land surveyor by the name of Fletcher took over when he attempted to find Hull's line. He found it, but for reasons we are still not able to determine, he made inaccurate measurements.

And he actually ended up demarcating a baseline that was several hundred feet. It was about 800ft south of Hove's line. Later on, another land surveyor was brought in to try to correct this discrepancy. His name is Joseph Wampler.

And what Wampler ended up doing was he determined where the whole line was. He determined where the Fletcher line was located. And he said, okay, these lines are a few hundred feet away from one another.

What we'll do is we will survey from both points. And so Michigan's land survey was exactly done by that.

It was surveyed from two different points that are slightly off from one another, which really is quite remarkable. To think about.

And all these years later you yourself can actually see what this physically looks like because the state of Michigan has marked on the land. Well, it's very much the border of Jackson and Ingham County.

There's a few acres of land that the state acquired through the years that was on private property that surround where these original land survey marks were laid down at the points at which the base and meridian lines meet.

That area of land again, the state of Michigan acquired enough land around it a few years ago that they were able to establish a state park there, and it is called the Meridian Baseline Survey Point Park. Sometime go there and check it out and in doing so you will be at really the point point at which Michigan in many ways began.

Last thing I'll say about this is if you own property, sometime take out your property deed, look at the survey marks that are on that property deed.

Whether you realize or not, all of those survey marks make reference back to original lines that were drawn on maps 200 years ago that are all part of that bostrophedonical survey system. So this episode of Land Stories will not end in Defiance, Ohio, even though that's where it began, it'll end in Lansing.

You've been listening to Land Stories with me, David Siwik.

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