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In the years following the War of 1812, Virginians enacted legislation to develop the Commonwealth’s “internal improvements”: its canals, turnpikes, and roads. Virginians were very interested in learning more about their state’s geology, topography, transportation, and communication networks as they sought to broaden Virginia’s economic reach by connecting its cities and ports with farmers in the Ohio River Valley. One of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in 1816 created the Board of Public Works, the agency responsible for overseeing these internal improvements. Virginia’s first official program to survey and map the state county by county, to succeed Bishop Madison’s map of Virginia, was also established.

The “Act to Provide an Accurate Chart of Each County and a General Map of the Territory of this Commonwealth” provided specific guidelines for this project. Each county was to be surveyed at 200 poles to an inch, each pole being equal to 16 and a half feet. County boundaries were to be surveyed and each county map was to include important roads, rivers, creeks, mountains, islands, principal roads, ferries, and bridges, as well as the exact position of cities, towns, villages, mills, manufactories, public houses, and other places of note. Project surveyors were given permission to access public records in a county clerk’s or surveyor’s office and to be able to enter upon any lands within the county. Each county court was to contract with a surveyor and provide the governor with a copy of the contract, subject to his approval. Two maps were to be drafted, one for the county and the other to be forwarded to the Executive office, to be deposited in the archives of the Commonwealth. During the 1817 General Assembly session, the legislature revised the act, transferring the power to contract with surveyors to the governor, relieving the county courts of this duty. $50,000 was set aside for the mapping project, including the engraving and publication of the future general map of Virginia.

The act also authorized Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas to hire surveyors to map Virginia’s boundaries and its great divisions including:

  1. Major rivers and their soundings, depths, and channels.
  2. Mountains and their gaps and the highest elevation in each county.
  3. The coordinates (to be determined) for remarkable places/points.

This survey work would secure each county its proper position within the Commonwealth. The legislation also called for the Executive to hire one or more mineralogists to accompany surveyors, to “categorize Virginia’s mountains by reference to their mineral production under their proper geological description and denoted on the general map.” The Commonwealth posted advertisements inviting surveyors to send in their proposals for surveying the state.

In October 1816, Virginia’s Council of State contracted with four men to survey the Commonwealth: Andrew Alexander, William H. Meriweather, George Wyche, and John Wood. Andrew Alexander was appointed to survey from the Blue Ridge Mountains to (and including) the Alleghany Mountains, rivers, etc. Mr. William H. Meriwether of Albemarle was assigned to survey those rivers above the Great Mail Road to (and including) the Blue Ridge Mountains from the James to the Potomac Rivers. John Wood was hired to survey Virginia’s rivers and streams from the James to the Potomac Rivers below the Great Mail Road. George Wyche of Greensville was hired to survey the country south of the James River from the Atlantic Ocean to the Alleghany, surveying the Roanoke, Dan, Meherrin, Nottoway, Black Water, Elizabeth, Nansemond, and Appomattox Rivers, as well as part of the Alleghany and Blue Ridge Mountains from North Carolina to the James River. Their work contributed to the general map of Virginia, which was published in 1826. It was not until 1819 that the county mapping project began when John Wood was appointed principal surveyor.

And the mineralogist? The general map of Virginia from 1826 included a section titled “Geological Remarks” but it was not until 1835 that an act of the General Assembly was passed authorizing the appointment of a principal geologist, William Barton Rogers, future founder of MIT, to oversee Virginia’s geological survey. Rogers is credited with drafting a manuscript geological map of the state circa 1835.

“Mapping the Commonwealth” will present examples from 40 manuscript maps that highlight the painstaking task of creating Virginia’s first official state map. Combining art and science, these surveys attest to the dedication, skill, and stamina of surveying teams who worked without the benefit of GPS and today’s technology. Correspondence and other documents related to the map’s publication, as well as copperplates — printing plates used for engraving — will also be displayed in the exhibition.

Cassandra Farrell

Senior Map Archivist

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