I would like to share some of my perspective on early American Surveying History, and at the same time get a discussion going. I have been fortunate enough to have lived New England  since I was born, and spent 47 years practicing land surveying here. I, like many other surveyors, have developed a keen interest in our history. It is interesting to note that Popham Colony in Maine and Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts were formed in 1607 and 1620 respectively, and both had survey maps made of them..Popham Colony's map was of the proposed village and fortifications; Plymouth Colony's map was a layout of the meersteads...SOOO..we know that surveying came to America's shores by 1607. Surveying was much like the military., The "regular surveyors" were British and trained the locals to survey as they did in England..in the military the British Regulars trained the colonists to be part time militias. This type of arrangement continued for nearly 180 years (1607-1783)...from where I sit that is 176 years of boundary surveying on the East Coast before we became the United States of America".

Boston is a wonderful place to study land development and surveying history. When Boston Town became Boston City in the early 1600's, there were approximately 1200 people living on 40 square miles of land.

By 2011 there were 625,100 people living on 48 square miles of land. Not only has the population grown from   30 people to 3022 people per square mile mile; the land mass has grown from 40 sq. miles to 48 square miles, all as a result of filled land (the boundaries of the city did not change).

Within 100 years Boston had grown by over 9000 people, or to 265 people per square mile. By then. like today, the greater Boston area had far exceeded Boston in population growth. Today Boston has 625000 persons but when included with its "Greater Boston area" it has over 4 1/2 million people.

Now, consider this: tens of thousands of property had been surveyed in the Greater Boston area by 1783.

They had been surveyed by British surveyors or their trained counterparts using British instruments and British surveying education.  Just in the Boston area alone they must have set tens of thousands of monuments establishing thousands of miles of boundary lines ....it is almost beyond comprehension to me how many miles of property lines and how many thousands (maybe millions) of monuments were set in Colonies all along the Atlantic Coast from 1603 to 1783!!

Just one other thought....It has been 230 years since we became the USA (in September, 2013)...I wonder how many of those original lines we have moved and how many monumants we have failed to preserve or honor?

I hope we can have a lively discussion.

David C. Garcelon