Surveying mountain brought surprises

For some reason, the teacher at Central School was taking out her spite on little brother Hugh. It didn’t seem right because he had done good at the Pea Ridge school. He was the only student in the first grade and now she had to teach another class. Maybe that was what she was mad about. She kept him in at noon one day and the next day Mother took Hugh to school and approached the teacher and somehow settled the difference because Hugh’s trouble came to an end.

We had lived on the place about four months when Roscoe Hobbs bought the place. Rosco agreed to honor Dad’s lease and to hire Dad and the boys to work on the place. The first work was Rosco hired Marce “Mug” Hayes, the elected Benton County surveyor, to survey and stake the entire farm. Mug hired Felix and Charles to pull chain for him and they started surveying the farm.

They went over a survey starting point that was near Old Leetown and began. They followed a line east for about two miles then headed north to the point that was the south point of the place. The east line ran pretty true until they were on top of the mountain then the problems began. Mug Hayes said that indications showed that it was the first time the mountain had been surveyed since it had been surveyed and plated over 100 years before in 1829. Mug said that on sandstone mountains they had used lime rock shivers to make the survey corners then on limestone mountains they would use flint rock or sand stone to mark the corners. They were now finding limestone markings on a sandstone mountain.

Each time they would come to a quarter section, half section or a section point, they would start looking for the original marker and would always find it within an inch or so from the iron stake marker that they had just set. Mug said they found that in a long span of time, erosion alone could cause the point to be two or three inches off. That in itself would show how accurate the original surveyors had been over 100 years before.

The first problem they had was that they went across a watermelon patch that belong to Wallace Scott. Of course this was only a fake watermelon patch that Wallace would put out and tell all of the boys where it was and then he would plant a patch of watermelons in the middle of a cornfield to confuse the boys. The boys got onto his trick pretty quick and all they had to do was go upon the mountain and look across the fields of corn and see a blank spot and then walk straight to his watermelon patch.

When they had crossed the mountain and started down the east slope they ran their line between a fairly new log house and a log barn that belonged to a Green. The house was on the right side of the line but the barn was on the Hammonds Nursery Farm. The man agreed to have the barn moved within 60 days.

Then when they started west, they took practically all of a cornfield that belonged to Clyde Maynard. Clyde claimed that he had been farming that piece of ground for 40 years. The line then went south past the Wiley Mosley farm. This was the only line that didn’t show any discrepancy in the survey. When they had reached the northwest corner of the Rev. B.R. Williams 40-acre farm and turned east for a quarter mile. When it reached the north east corner of the Rev. B. R. Williams’ 40-acre farm and turned south it took exactly half of his grape vineyard. The grape vineyard didn’t do any good in the first place because it was too dry on top of the mountain. It had evidently been set out for root stock for the nursery. Rev. Williams wasn’t satisfied and he got him three stakes and went up and down the mountain for about two months trying to figure how this could happen, and then Rosco Hobbs offered to buy him out. Rosco bought the Reverend’s place but let him live there until he could find a place he wanted. Continued next week…

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