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Gilberts: Early surveyors were not always equal in ability

Surveying a new area for settlement was a very important task.

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Surveying a new area for settlement was a very important task. In the Western District (our area), the major surveys were carried out in the late 1700s. And, like so many other things in life, were only as good as the men who undertook them.

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The first surveyor of note in our area was a gentleman by the name of Patrick McNiff, and his career was, to say the least, a bit checkered.

McNiff’s first survey was done in 1790 immediately following the McKee Purchase that finalized the purchase of a good portion of the land in Southwestern Ontario from the Indigenous inhabitants.

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McNiff was first sent to survey the land on Lake Erie. He returned soon after being sent out and, for unknown reasons, reported back that the land on the lake was “unsuitable for settlement.”

His next assignment took him to the Thames River where, in October 1790, he had to stop after surveying approximately 27 kilometres of the river due to what he described as “ill health.”

December 1793 once again found McNiff on the Thames River surveying the three townships that existed above the Moravian Settlement.

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Reluctant to do any more survey work, McNiff had to be persuaded, with the promise of nine soldiers to help him complete his incomplete survey work. Things didn’t work out very well for McNiff on this survey venture, either, as two of the soldiers “lent out” to him fell through a patch of unsafe ice on the Thames and drowned.

Not surprisingly, Patrick McNiff was never employed by the government again after 1794. The reason given by the authorities was he was considered to be “the cause of much confusion wherever he was employed.”

To add insult to injury, McNiff was also refused a promised farm lot on the Thames River near Chatham with the reason being given that such a “troublesome, radical character” did not deserve such property.

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In an act of reprisal that probably surprised no one, McNiff moved to Fort Detroit in 1796 (when it became part of the United States) and sold illegal grants of land along the Thames River to unsuspecting settlers for $2 per parcel of land.

Replacing Patrick McNiff as local surveyor was the ambitious, honest and highly competent Abraham Iredell. A Loyalist from the Philadelphia area, Iredell was appointed deputy surveyor of the Western District in June 1795 and completed his first survey of the future town site of Chatham by August that same year.

After completing his survey of Chatham, Iredell took up residence in Chatham and built one of the first log homes in the town site. Situated at the corner of William and Water streets, he planted an apple orchard that lasted in some form or other for more than 150 years.

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During his tenure in Chatham, Iredell served as chief returning officer for several elections during the 1800 to 1804 time period, and was engaged in all important surveys done within the Western District between 1795 and 1800. One of those important surveys was the surveying of Communication Road from Chatham to Rondeau Bay, where he also surveyed the town site of Shrewsbury.

Although Abraham Iredell died in 1806 and had been deputy surveyor for little more than 10 years, his many accomplishments and stellar performance quickly outdistanced the rather poor, incomplete and inadequate surveying job done by his perplexing predecessor.

In a democracy there is a tendency to believe that all men are equal and contribute equally to the community. That tenet was no more true in the 1790s than today. It remains an ideal rarely realized.

The Gilberts are award-winning historians with a passion for telling the stories of C-K’s fascinating past.

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