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The Origin of the Mile, Foot, & Acre and History of
"Metes & Bounds" |
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| History of the statute mile |
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The mile has been an important measurement from the beginning of written history in the "new world." The word "mile" comes from the Latin "mille passum," literally "thousand paces," a unit introduced in Britain by the Roman occupation (57 BC-450 AD). The term actually referred to the movement of the Roman Legions, which described their movement in terms of "paces" during the occupation of the outlying portions of the Roman Empire.
"Mille passum" was the distance traveled by the Roman Legions in 5,000 "paces." A pace today is an exaggerated step, but back then, it was defined by two "marching" steps, meaning the pace then was the distance |
| traveled by the soldier in two steps. Each "passus" consisted of five "pes," the Roman foot, so the "mille passum" was 5,000 "pes."
This also meant that the Roman Legions traveled 5 "feet" in two steps which was actually 5000/5280 = or about 95% of today's foot, however. Therefore the legions moved 0.95 times 2 ½ feet or a little over 2 foot and 4 and a half inches or about 29 inches in each step. The Dictionary defines a regular pace as 30 inches and a quick time pace as 36 inches. It also defines the Roman (double step) pace as "5 Roman feet or 58.1 inches," hence the 29 inch "Roman" step. The precision of Roman Legion's marching was so regular that distances were fairly accurately described by their movements.
It also allowed the "surveying" (measuring) of the countryside as the Roman conquest progressed, which gave them the ability to divide or subdivide the amount of territory they occupied or "possessed" This became the precursor to today's recorded "property title descriptions." The "mille passum" was also known as a "milliarium," literally "milestone." At some point, the "mille passum" was subsequently divided into 8 "stadia," each of which were 625 "pes." |
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| Some scholars reference the "mille passum" in Roman occupied Britain as about 1,479.5 meters, or only 90% of a statute mile. |
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| The Saxons seem to have retained a 5,000-foot mile (their mil), but that measurement was based on the Saxon foot, literally, which was even shorter than the Roman one, closer to the size of the average person's foot today. The Saxon mil was probably about 1,257 meters, about 0.78 statute miles. |
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| As time went on, the Roman mile grew from about 5,000 feet to 5,280 feet. And, the English furlong became confused with the Roman stade (plural stadia). In those days legal proceedings, records and other official documents were kept in Latin. "Mile" in English naturally became "mille" in Latin. The nearest equivalent in Latin to the English "furlong" (660 feet), however, was the "stade" (625 pes). The educated knew that the Roman "mille passus" contained 8 stadia, and continually translating "furlongs" as stadia planted the idea that a mile contained 8 furlongs, whereas in the past the two units had been used for entirely different purposes and had no direct relationship. |
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| The result was confusion: there was the 5,000-foot mile, and the 8-furlong mile, and as such came some attempts to redefine the furlong to make 8 of them fit in a 5,000-foot mile. Something had to give. However, the length of the furlong, the basis of the acre, was not adjustable because the ruling classes' rents and revenues were based upon it. And since a slight change in the mile would have no great impact on the "economy," Elizabeth the First ended the confusion by coming down on the side of the 8-furlong, 5,280-foot mile, by royal decree, in effect abolishing the 5,000-foot mile. |
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| Old English mile |
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| Other definitions for the mile persisted in England for centuries after the statute mile was defined. The distances between English cities given in guidebooks as late as the 17th century use a mile which is longer than the statute mile, probably around 1.3 statute miles. This mile has been dubbed the old English mile, perhaps in the 14th through the 17th century, although most scholars believe it is probably no older than the statute mile. |
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| The Acre |
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The word "acre" was derived from the Roman "ager", which was defined as the area of land that a single yoke of oxen could plow in a single day. The "Star Chamber" during the time of Henry VII (1485-1509) declared that an acre would be an area 40 poles by 4 poles, or ten square chains, our current definition of an acre. Edmund Gunter (1581-1626) came up with a physical "chain" to measure land area. It was 66 feet long (4 rods).
He tried to make it a bit "metric" by dividing the chain into 100 links (each 7.92 inches long). Hence, the very well known measuring device called the "Gunter Chain," which was used to survey and define much of the property boundaries in the American frontier.
There are 640 acres in a section, which measures one mile on each of four sides of a square. Because there were never any "perfect" surveys, and because the surveys were run on a "spherical" earth using instruments that only saw "straight" lines, it was necessary to have survey corrections, which were made on the west and north tiers of a township. One mile equals 5,280 feet, 320 rods (16.5 feet), or 80 chains (80 x 66 feet).
One chain is made from 100 links, each link being 7.92 inches long
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| (792 inches / 100). Chains were used by early surveyors to mete (meter/measure) out the lines they ran. They used actual chains made up of 100 links. The chain to this day remains a standard unit in land surveying. |
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| Metes & Bounds |
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| When Europeans came to North America, they brought with them their sense of land ownership and property boundaries. It was an awesome challenge to take a wilderness and divide it up into ownership parcels. Most of the earliest descriptions in America used an archaic system called the "Rural Land Description". Its inadequacy can best be illustrated by the following excerpt in an 1812 record from Connecticut. |
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"…after turning around in another direction, and by a sloping straight line to a certain heap of stone which is by pacing, just 18 rods and about one half a rod more from the stump of the big hemlock tree where Philo Blake killed the bear…" |
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| After land arguments became more litigious, lengths and directions were often (but not always) provided from landmark to landmark. This subdivision of land is called "metes and bounds." "Metes" refers to measuring or "metering" property, and "bounds" refers to identifying boundaries. This was a somewhat better means of describing boundaries, but when the landmarks died, disappeared, or changed, re-establishing them was nearly impossible. This all but archaic system exists today in the first 13 states and most of the land east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio River, with the exception of Alabama, Mississippi, and most of Florida. It became clear by the mid-1800s that this system would not be adequate for the description of land boundaries in a rapidly growing nation. |
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| Townships |
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The township is set up to reflect a positional hierarchy with the primary terms "Township" and "Range" as defining descriptors.
Abbreviations:
Township(s) T., Tps.
Range(s) R., Rs.
Section(s) sec., secs.
North N.
Northeast NE., etc. |
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| Plats |
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| A survey plat is more restrictive in scope than a map. A survey plat is a surveyor's diagram showing land boundaries and /or subdivision of land. It is a drawing that represents the particular area included in a survey (such as a township, private land claim, or mineral claim) and the lines surveyed, established, retraced, or resurveyed. The plat typically shows the direction and length of each of the surveyed lines; the relationship to the adjoining official surveys; the boundaries, descriptions and area of each parcel of land subdivided; and, insofar as is practicable, the relief and improvements within the limits of the survey. A map, as contrasted with a plat, graphically represents to a scale the physical features of an area and may show some general land boundaries, especially political and administrative boundaries. |
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| The cadastral survey plat is the source document for people's rights in lands - the source document on which all land patents, descriptions, and conveyances are based. A land survey is considered an official cadastral survey when the survey has been accepted and the plat is filed with the appropriate land office. |
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Plat Abbreviations::
Township(s) T., Tps.
Range(s) R., Rs.
Section(s) sec., secs.
North N.
Northeast NE., etc.
Example of a Plat: |
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| Land Descriptions - An Example from the Web* |
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| Finding Public Land Sales in Illinois |
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| For the sake of illustration, let's assume that you have searched the Illinois Public Land Sale database to find land purchased by Richard F. Beadles. |
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| The system returns: |
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| This record shows a discrepancy between the acreage and the land description. The land description is the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of section 8 or 1/16 of the 640 acres in the section. This is 40 acres not 80. For remainder of the discussion, assume that the acreage is 40. The database says that the land description is: |
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| Northwest Quarter of the Northeast Quarter of Section 8 in Township 1 South, Range 1 East of the Third Principal Meridian [Jefferson County] |
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| Step 1. Find the Third Principal Meridian and the Baseline which crosses it on the map of Illinois. |
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| Step 2. Note that the land is in Township 1 South [T1S], Range 1 East [R1E], which is the first township south of [below] the Baseline and the first township east [right] of the Meridian. |
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| Step 3. The database reported that the land was in Jefferson County, so you should expect to be in the box marked with the J. |
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| Step 4. On the township map provided, locate Section 8 in T1S R1E. |
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| Step 5. Now use the section map provided to first find the Northeast Quarter of Section 8 [orange]. Then find the Northwest Quarter of the Northeast Quarter [blue]. |
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| Step 6. Pat yourself on the back! |
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The land is in Grand Prairie Township of Jefferson County, Illinois, about 1.2 miles east of US Rte 21 where it runs along the Jefferson-Washington County line and 1 mile south of the Jefferson-Marion County line. The database shows the land as a railroad purchase which was land given to the Illinois Central railroad and sold by them. A recent map shows that a line of the Illinois Central Railroad runs through the land.
Maps If you're looking for maps of Illinois, you might try the Illinois Atlas and Gazetteer
[DeLorme Mapping, PO Box 298-6600, Freeport, ME 04032 - DeLorme's WWW site].
This has about 80 pages of color topographical maps on the scale of 1:120,000 [1 inch=2.4 miles]. The maps show and name townships (but NOT in the Township-Range System described above), roads, communities, railroads, waterways, etc. I have made a lot of use of my copy.
Three drawbacks of the atlas: (1) Most of the roads are drawn at nearly the same width, so it's difficult to tell what type of road surface you will find. (2) The township-range markings are not used. (3) The page breaks can make it difficult to see what is adjacent.
DeLorme also has maps for other states. I frequently see them in the travel-geography sections of bookstores as well as in some libraries.
NOTE: Richard Beadles provides a good example of what you can miss when using a computer database. There is only one entry under Richard F. Beadles, but there are two more under Richard F. Beadle. Both purchases are in T1S R1E of 3rd P.M. [Grand Prairie Twp] of Jefferson County. In a printed copy of the database it is easier to scan for variations in spelling. In a searchable computer database, you may need your imagination to find all of the entries. |
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