Calibrating Surveying Instruments – the Victoria Park Meridian Stones

Surveying the Island in 1765 and producing a marvel grid of 67 twenty-thousand-acre townships to be filled with hopeful and vigorous English settlers to create farms and fish the sea, was the most wonderful project imaginable. It was the only attempt to establish a traditional feudal colony in a discrete territory in all British North America. It was an Island in a perfect location.

We are all very familiar by now with this geometric marvel of planning and execution, and indeed nearly all of us who live on the Island today, are living in enclaves contained within those boundaries aligned to the Magnetic North of 1764 created by Samuel Holland. It was a perfect topographical exercise that, despite much development and the creation of new roads and districts, still survives today to such a degree that were Holland to resurrect and visit, he would know his way about and might even approve of some of the inland developments that his original mandate did not require to be specified.

The Holland map was possibly the most original and spectacularly conceived mapping project produced for the North American colonies in the Eighteenth Century.

Here is a reduced copy of a very large scan of the map after it was restored. It is still large enough to permit a very detailed study of Holland’s drawing.

Holland Manuscript Map 1765 – Nat. Archives, Kew

 

Every square inch of the Island was divided into sixty-seven 20,000-acre townships contained within the home country land system of Counties, Parishes and Townships. Every colonist would know where they belonged and where they had to develop the township into clearly specified regulations. There was no room for deviation. Order had to reign supreme, and every settler would know exactly where they fitted into the scheme of things.

Holland and his assistants described the quality of every township in some detail, and it became obvious that some areas were far more desirable than others. In 1767 a famous lottery took place where all interested persons, after having met certain qualifications, literally drew from a hat a number which corresponded to a township on the Holland map. At once they knew where their land was, and at once they found out what they had won. There would have been whoops of joy and groans of utter disappointment.

 

The Aftermath – Surveying Saint John’s Island for Colonists

Overall, the great colonial experiment – the Platonic Ideal of Colonisation in a New World – was a failure because the landlords did not live up to their agreements. What was NOT a failure was the reality that Holland’s physical concept for development, based on current British colonial policy, was such a success that today wherever we move, wherever we live, we do so in pockets of land drawn by Holland and surveyed as exactly as possible to his specifications.

There were problems with traditional surveying. The Eighteenth Century was just coming into a period of new achievement in measuring longitude, which was absolutely essential in creating the grid necessary to describe a territory on paper and to divide it into whatever plots were necessary on the ground. There could be no discrepancy or the outline, like in all maps up to this point, would bear little resemblance to reality on the ground (see Sobel).

Holland knew well enough the nightmares that faced the colonial surveyors who were to divide the Island of Saint John into the designated townships, or lots, as they came to be called after 1767. He had to make plans and set up a point of departure for all future surveying by establishing a longitude line, measured exactly from zero longitude at Greenwich Observatory to a convenient point on the Island. Having chosen Observation Cove, near the entrance to Charlottetown Harbour, to be his home base, that is where he carefully and excruciatingly set up the line of longitude from which all other measurements in the conversion of the ideal map into the practical lots of land on the ground that would be developed by the colonists. This was done by a variety of means involving compass readings, solar and lunar observations, astronomical observations of the moons of Saturn, and consulting published tables of such observations from around the world.

People who study the great map might not notice the subtle way in which Holland established his longitude point for the record. Nor might they notice the place where, when the line was extended to the north, the line would touch land at the very point where in time surveyors would calibrate their instruments in a field that was part of the future estate of the Governor – Fanningbank.

If you drop a line from the clearly marked Observation Cove on the map to the bottom border you will see this.

That is the prime meridian used to draw the Holland map and meant to be used, aligned to the north of 1764, by all future surveyors in laying out the lot boundaries and the property boundaries contained within them.

Follow the line up where you will come to the rose, that ancient device for the compass face, that shows the true north and the variation of 15 degrees required to draw all the survey lines to the North of 1764. This detail from the map is very dramatic because it demonstrates visually Holland’s consideration for those who, in the near future, would begin to carve out properties in the wilderness using only a magnetic compass for their basic direction.

Now run this line north until it hits terra firma, and you will see that it ends up in the reserved area of land set aside for the capital city of Charlottetown.

Here it is compared to the data provided by Google Maps. In the context of all we have been looking at in previous map posts, it comes as a shock that it should be dead on the mark.

It runs through Observation Cove and touches land where Victoria Park is today. God and surveying move in mysterious ways because the second governor of Saint John’s Island was Edmund Fanning (1737-1818) who served from 1787 to 1804.

 

The Governor who replaced Patterson was Edmund Fanning (1739-1818) who was an American born administrator, land agent and army officer. He was educated at the new Yale University and was a brilliant scholar with many abilities. He received several honorary degrees, including one from Oxford University. However, early in his career his actions were interpreted in the most hostile manner, by those who saw him as an enemy of the common people, and after terrible attacks on his person and property, he was moved to New York. In American historical accounts he has a very bad name.

Escaping an intolerable life in the American states in 1783 he became Governor of Nova Scotia. He got married during this time and started a family. In 1786 he was named as Walter Patterson’s replacement and then began the painful process of transition, living in a scruffy cottage with no hope of a Government House on the horizon. Fanning thought this would be an interim appointment, but it lasted from1786 to 1805. They were excruciating years starting unpleasantly with Patterson, rather like Donald Trump, refusing to hand over the seals of office and insisting that his protegees in the government be kept on helping promote his numerous agenda while he went to England to be tried for some of his alleged wrongdoings.

The Fanning story is very well told by J. M. Bumstead in this DCB article.

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/fanning_edmund_5E.html

 

One of the things that Fanning did do, that will be to his everlasting credit, was to designate, in a corner of the large map of the divisions of the Charlottetown Commons, produced by Colonel Grey, a field of 100 acres that took up the other lobe in Holland’s map, the west one, where it was to form the basis of an estate for the Lieutenant Governor. This land would in time also be used for other purposes other than being simply the Governor’s farm and ornamental gardens. At the end of Fanning’s tenure, a battery called Fort Edward was built to augment the defense of the harbour, paired with the battery already present at the southwest corner of the city. The next Governor, Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBrisay (1805-12), a great surveyor and cartographer, extremely anxious about the inability of the surveyors who were dividing up the Island into farms having no means of adjusting their instruments so that the discrepancies at the end would not be too great, introduced legislation in 1809 to regulate the surveyors in the colony. His intention was to lay out on the ground a series of stones that marked the compass directions of the day, and strongly indicated the Magnetic North of 1764, so that surveyors could come to this place and adjust their instruments so that there would be consistency in their various works. The Act was passed but it was not until 1820 that the first stones were laid, setting up accurate compass points for Holland’s magnetic north of 1764 and the true north of the day. These stones – which together form a scientific instrument – are still there and can be easily visited.

 

Governor Fanning’s reserved 100 acres for the future estate of the Governor, a detail from A Plan of Charlotte Town Common divided into Lots of 12 Acres each, those which are otherwise marked excepted. [In pencil] by Col R Gray. 1786-1805, PARO 0639-37.

 

At that time there was no official residence for the Governor who had to live with the military or in rented accommodations, or even build his own house! On May 16, 1789, Governor Fanning issued a proclamation granting 100 acres of the town common as a place where a suitable residence for the Governor could be built. It contained the exact spot where Holland’s meridian line hit the city boundaries. That land, closer to 80+ acres, is now occupied by the Fanningbank Estate that contains Government House, and Victoria Park which, in the 1870s, was detached from the estate and given to the City of Charlottetown as its great public park.

 

The Meridian Stones

When Samuel Holland surveyed the Island into sixty-seven 20,000 acre lots it was intended that the properties of all the tenants would be enclosed by lines drawn parallel to the Magnetic North of 1764. For the most part this seems to have been followed with great difficulty in the early years of the colony. Delineating the boundaries of a farm in the wilderness of an unsettled lot had many difficulties and the result of the surveying was often inaccurate. The need for finely tuned surveyors’ instruments led to the Fanningbank estate when in 1820 and 1846 a series of markers, based on earlier legislation, were set up to indicate the official meridional line of the colony. Would it surprise anybody that another great surveyor of British North America, Joseph Frederic Wallet Des Barres (1722-1824) who served as Governor of Saint John’s Island from 1805-12, should make a huge effort to set up an official point for the establishment of the meridian line. He would have been intimately familiar with Holland’s map and official meridian line and so in 1809 the Legislature passed the following act for establishing a meridional line to regulate surveyors in this colony. Characteristically for the times, nothing was done about it for eleven years.

 

“WHEREAS it is highly necessary, to promote accuracy in surveying the Lands of this Colony, that a Meridional line should be established by Astronomical Observation.

 

1. 1. Be it enacted, by the Lieutenant Governor, Council and Assembly, That it shall and may be lawful to and for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Commander in Chief of this Colony for the time being, to nominate and appoint three commissioners, (of whom His Majesty’s Surveyor-General of Lands in this Colony shall be one), for the purpose of establishing a Meridional line in manner hereinafter directed – that is to say, that a Meridional line, by Astronomical Observations, shall be properly drawn and ascertained, by correctly fixing three stones, of such sufficient height and dimensions, as will admit a full view from the most northerly stone of the two others in the said Line, which Stones to have the Line accurately marked thereon, together with the variation and the year in which the same was done – the said Meridional Line to be fixed in the most convenient place in or near Charlottetown, by the said Commissioners, within six months after the passing of this Act, and by which all surveyors shall regulate and rectify their several instruments once in every year at least, and in the presence of the Surveyor-General or of some person by him duly authorized for that purpose, or of one or more of the said Commissioners. And all and every surveyor of lands is and are hereby required to demand and obtain from the said Surveyor-General, or person authorized as aforesaid, or from one or more of the said Commissioners, a certificate that the several instruments of such Surveyor or Surveyors to be used or employed in surveying, are good and sufficient; and in the certificate so to be granted, shall be set down and expressed the Variation found at the period of making such Certificate so to be granted, which the Surveyor-General, or some one or more of the said Commissioners, is and are hereby authorized to do…”

 

Here is a detail of the John Ball 1873 plan of Government Farm (PARO) and the proposed park showing the locations of the meridional markers – five stones and a cannon barrel for the Magnetic North of 1764 and lining up with Holland’s longitudinal datum point at Observation Cove.

 

Finally, in 1820 three stones were set up in the general area of the Prince Edward battery. The Commissioners charged with this task recommended that an additional marker be set up designating the Magnetic North of 1764 as that was the line that had to be followed if property surveys were to fit into the lots surveyed by Holland. Finally, in the Prince Edward Island Gazette  of 22 August 1821, p. 3, the Governor, C. Douglas Smith issued this proclamation. It is the first tangible public notice of what the stones are for and how they should be used.

 

In 1846 another Act required that two markers be set up at right angles to the base or angle stone of the original alignment to mark True East and West. This was done but one of the stone markers is now missing from this alignment, removed in recent times, it is said, because it interfered with a playing field. It is believed the rest of these markers still stand in their original positions, spanning both the Fanningbank estate and Victoria Park. As can be seen in the detail of the Ball plan (above) these markers covered a large area of ground where no obstacles or vegetation could be allowed to obscure the sightings made by surveyors as they adjusted their instruments. This controlled the evolution of that landscape absolutely. In June of 2005 these markers, consisting of the four surviving stones and the cannon barrel, were enclosed in decorative iron cages with appropriate interpretative panels.

Although virtually ignored today this collection of markers remains as a sort of sacred site, the very place where the perfection of the Island artefact was assured. Their significance and presence must never be lost as they refined the tools with which our physical identity on the land was established once and for all.

Here is the stone that marks True North, since the 1870s hidden behind the fence that marks the Fanningbank boundary with Victoria Park. It makes no sense and must symbolise some now forgotten row of the time when spite was in the air. The handing over of that land to the city was accompanied by years of acrimony.

The fence should be moved to reunite it with its fellows, and I can’t understand why the Government House Committee, after 50 years of generally unfocussed deliberations, has never acted to restore this precious monument by suggesting that the province give up a few metres of land. It would be such an heroic gesture on their part.

 

This old cannon marks the Magnetic North of 1764 following which ALL land divisions on the Island were made from the very beginning. A cannon was probably chosen instead of a stone so that surveyors would not mistake 1764 North and True North.

The cannon points to this stone, on the edge of the sea, and next to the old gun emplacement we call Fort Edward today. It is the base or angle stone where surveyors with their instruments stood in the process of calibration.

 

The other stones, carefully protected by metal cages, are to be found elsewhere in the grounds of Victoria Park. All are inscribed with their surveying data.

 

A Sad and Cautionary Tale

As careful as he was, Holland was unable to prevent serious errors from creeping into his map. First, Lockerby and Sobey (2015, pp. 44-46), and then S. Max Edelson (2018) superimposed the Holland outline on a satellite view of the Island as it is today. Edelson used georeferencing techniques to fit Holland into the curvature of the earth.  Doing these superimpositions with the three maps having the greatest integrity – Holland 1765, the Holland-Lewis 1765 and the lovely presentation map of 1767 – Edelson found significant variations in the overlay patterns. The most dramatic was the original manuscript shown here. Looking carefully, you can make out the outlines of the satellite and the map, contrasted to about 50%.

http://www.viseyes.org/mapscholar/?2165&p=30

 

In their measurements Lockerby and Sobey calculated that the very young Thomas Wright, the surveyor of that area, had added over 20,000 acres to the Island’s surface just in the area west of the Portage Isthmus. He did similar things in other areas where he surveyed, along with neglecting various inlets with their configurations. The fact that his work was done largely in winter when snow obscured everything mitigates the seriousness of Wright’s omissions and deviations.  Holland, in his wisdom and possible mistrust of his colleagues, distanced himself from possible cartographic catastrophes by carefully cataloguing the precise extent of the work done by each of his surveyors on the big map itself.

These mistakes would cause endless trauma to surveyors plotting out farm lots for new settlers until these issues were resolved after the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Despite these mistakes the Holland map remains the only territory to emerge in early British North America where every square inch -more or less – is accounted for, and contained within a shoreline that survives, except for erosion and accretion, to this day.

 

 

What did the early surveys look like?

In the Public Archives there are numerous manuscript surveys for both large areas of land and individual farms as the townships in the Holland grid filled with settlers. One pf the finest early examples of fitting individual farms into a particular lot is by John Plaw (1745-1820), an architect of the Picturesque movement who spent his last years on the Island and, aside from lucrative surveying projects, established the first architectural style – the Greek Revival – to appear on the Island after the Georgian prototypes that were seen everywhere.

 

Refugee Lots on Lot 32, Prince Edward Island, Copied from the Original Plan, John Plaw, 1809, 29.5×20.5cm, PARO 0730.

You can see the upper reaches of the North River and the plans for a road to the northwest. To the left of the cartouche is the directional arrow, aligned to the magnetic north of 1764.

A more generalised idea of how properties were fitted proportionally and presented formally can be seen in this sketch by C. R. Allen, the chief surveyor of Meacham’s ATLAS of 1880 for what would eventually be lithographed as Lot 48.

R. Allen, surveyor, Map of Lot Forty-Eight, J. H. Meacham & Co, Atlas, ink and coloured wash on paper, PARO 0884.

Fitting everything in on paper in a manner that correctly represented the surveyed reality on the ground was an enormously difficult task. Measurements had to be so precise that one lot map could be placed next to its neighbour with as few slight irregularities as possible.

 

And now the settlers in a new land were ready to begin carving a home and a farm out of the wilderness. My favourite picture that gives the atmosphere of that moment is this woodcut from the American Agriculturist of April 1880.

Compare this view with any aerial view of the Island and you come away with the strongest impression of the labour and planning that went into the creation of this landscape – this human artefact.

 

North Carleton, aerial photograph, Prince Edward Island Slide Show & Screen Saver, R. Garnett, Airscapes, 2004.

 

Even today in this aerial photograph, the lines drawn in 1765 to guide our exploitation of the Island all line up with the boundaries set out in Holland’s map. This landscape is forever changing as small pioneer fields, bordered with hedgerows, are incorporated into vast areas fit for the heavy equipment that is the basis of modern farming. This process destroys the intimacy and beauty of the old family farm but is part of world progress. This change is visible from outer space as can be seen in this satellite map.

All this is not the creation of a lazy unplanned evolution, as seen in other parts of the world, but the work of a moment in time, when everything contained on the Island, from the Ice Age to the tragic end of the French Regime, was made into a multi-layered human artefact. Taking together all the elements of the story, both happy and tragic, in the end, it is “a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

 

Special Thanks

Harry Holman brought to my attention the clipping from the Prince Edward Island Gazette 22 August 1821. p. 3, that adds visual authority to the stones in the fields of the Fanningbank estate. I am most grateful.

 

PATRONS

Kind persons have provided support for the expenses incurred in producing this blog. I wish to express my deep gratitude to these individuals who have helped me cover the costs of archival scans, photographs, learned journals, books and professional services.

Marcel Carpenter
Scott Davidson
Trevor Gillingwater
Henry Kliner
Earle Lockerby
Dr. Edward and Sheila MacDonald
Robert L. Scobie

 

 

 

MY PERSONAL BLOG

I have begun a new autobiographical blog that tells the story of my ancestors and my own life in a cultural and historical context. Here is the link.

REGPORTERSSTORY.COM/PEI/

 

Resources

Alder, Ken, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World, The Free Press, New York, 2002.

Aughton, Peter, The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 2004.

Campey, Lucille H., Planters and Paupers: English Settlers in Atlantic Canada, A Natural Heritage Book, A Member of the Dundern Group, Toronto, 2010.

Chipman, Willis, The Life and Times of Major Samuel Holland: Surveyor General 1764-1801, Reprinted from the Ontario Historical Society’s “Papers and Records,” Volume XXI, 1924.

Douglas, R., Place Names of Prince Edward Island with Meanings, F. C. Acland, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, Ottawa, 1925.

Edelson, S. Max, Colonizing St. John Island: A History in Maps, internet site: https://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2018/11/14/colonizing-st-john-island-a-history-in-maps/.

Edelson, S. Max, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence, Harvard University Press, 2017.

Hornsby, Stephen J., Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J. W. F. Des Barres and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune, Carleton Library Series 221, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2011.

Lennox, Jeffers, Homelands and Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2017.

Lockerby, Earle, “Thomas Wright and the Holland Survey,” The Island Magazine, Number 66, Fall/Winter 2009, pp. 30-38, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, Charlottetown, 2009.

Lockerby, Earle and Sobey, Douglas, Samuel Holland: His Work and Legacy on Prince Edward Island, Island Studies Press, University of Prince Edward Island, Holland College, Charlottetown, 2015.

Murdin, Paul, Full Meridian of Glory: Perilous Adventures in the Competition to Measure the Earth, Copernicus Books, 2009.

Pedley, Mary Sponberg, The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005.

Porter, Reginald, Government House and the Fanningbank Estate: A Guidebook, The Friends of the Gatehouse Cooperative, Charlottetown, 2015.

Rayburn, Alan, Geographical Names of Prince Edward Island, Surveys and Mapping Branch, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Ottawa, 1973.

Sobey, Douglas, Early Descriptions of the Forests of Prince Edward Island – A Source Book – Part I, The French Period 1534-1758, Prince Edward Island Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Charlottetown, 2002.

Sobel, Dava, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Bloomsbury Books, New York, 2007.

Thomson, Don W., Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in Canada, Volume 1 Prior to 1867, The Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, 1966.