Navigating Methods of Map Making: A Feud Between Surveyors in the Enquirer

In February of 1816, the Virginia General Assembly approved an act for the overdue, expensive and laborious endeavor of creating the first state-funded Map of Virginia. Later that year, John Wood, world traveler and Scotland native, was chosen to be one of the surveyors to map Virginia’s Tidewater rivers. He became the principal surveyor for the county-mapping project in 1819. Once described as “peripatetic,” Wood’s occupations included author, teacher, mathematician, newspaper editor, and surveyor.

By the time of his appointment as surveyor, Wood was out of the newspaper business, but his writings appeared often, as both an editor and as simply a contributor, in Virginia newspapers from 1802 until his death in May 1822. Wood often employed papers to editorialize on a range of topics from politics and education to mapping techniques and celestial events. The early-19th-century Virginia newspapers that Wood contributed to were not only the primary means of disseminating information, but they also served as a public forum for important debates of the time. From late 1816 to early 1817, a brief but public feud played out in letters published in the Richmond Enquirer between Wood and Richmond City surveyor Richard Young. The back and forth stemmed from a letter written by Wood published in the Richmond Enquirer of December 7, 1816, in which he outlined the methods and tools he thought necessary for the monumental task of surveying the state.

Wood’s letter discussed geodesic operations and trigonometrical surveys, an “extremely simple” method for mapping, which he attempted to explain in a few paragraphs. He went on to describe the various tools needed for the job. According to Wood, French mathematicians had successfully utilized Borda’s repeating circles, “which are extremely portable and which can take angles within one second or two seconds of the truth.” Borda’s repeating circle, invented by Etienne Lenoir in 1784 and improved by Jean-Charles de Borda, was used for geodetic surveying and considered the equal to Ramsden’s theodolite, another tool mentioned in the article. The only objection to Borda’s repeating circle, according to Wood, was the small telescope, “whose magnifying power was not sufficient to distinguish accurately distant objects.” Whereas Ramsden’s theodolite, used by English surveyors, was “provided with a telescope of very high magnifying power.”

Wood concluded by explaining that if the method of using trigonometrical surveys was “deemed of too extensive a nature to be entered into at present, the next most eligible mode (I am of opinion) would be to ascertain with precision the latitude and longitude of the court-house of every state.” He believed the most efficient mode of determining latitude was by a Hadley’s sextant while longitude could be found with a reflecting telescope.

While Wood’s letter certainly conveyed that he was an expert in the field of mapping, a biting critique of Wood by fellow surveyor Richard Young appeared in the January 4, 1817 issue of the Enquirer, less than a month after Wood’s letter was published. Young’s letter cited several errors Wood had made using trigonometrical calculations to measure the James River. “I am totally at a loss how Mr. Wood could be able to trace the margin of water-courses, the Roads, or the County lines with accuracy,” Young wrote. He also thought Wood had underestimated the cost of creating a new, quality map of the state and ended his letter by saying, “I have only to remark, that in a work of such magnitude, skill and experience must be combined with proper instruments, in order to obtain an object so much to be desired, by every citizen who has any regard for his country.” It was clear Young did not think Wood was the man to survey and map Virginia’s eastern waterways.

In the subsequent issue of the Enquirer, published on January 7, 1817, a response from Wood to Young showed up on page 3. “I was much surprised, with reading the Enquirer, of Saturday last, a most unprovoked and unjustifiable attack made upon me, by Mr. Young, Surveyor of this city,” Wood replied. “Were Mr. Young as well known through all the State of Virginia, as in Richmond, his assertions would have received from me, no notice,” he continued, “but as this is not the case, I request, through the medium of your paper, briefly to state the true circumstances relative to the survey to which he alludes, and then I promise to take my leave of him.” Wood goes on to explain that he had calculated distances based on chain measurements provided by Meriwether Jones and Dr. John Foushee (two more newspaper men), so if anything was off, it was their faulty measurements and not the fault of trigonometrical calculations.

Young did not respond to Wood’s letter, so the discussion, at least in the newspaper, was apparently done. Wood’s initial letter, and the letters that followed between the two published in the Enquirer shed light on contemporary map-making methods while also revealing the debates going on in that world. Thanks to the letters by both Wood and Young, we discover yet another story among many behind the making of the Map of Virginia. You can see the Map of Virginia that Wood helped create, along with examples of 19th-century surveying equipment, in the Mapping the Commonwealth, 1816-1826 exhibit at the Library of Virginia until June 7, 2025.