IMH 75:2 201

"Chronicles of Upper Burnet" (1)

1881

Sunday, May 1st.

It began raining at about seven o'clock in showers and kept
at it till towards night and still continued threatening. No one
of us got far from the house till evening when we three men
each took a "jook," Alvin was gone up on Jake's Foster 40; I
went down to the road. John Fowler and his father were look­
ing at his wheat prospect and I passed a little while with them.
Subsequently John found Father and they also canvassed the
subject of wheat. Father had gone up the creek. I wrote part of
a letter to Grandmother One of my teeth hurt most of the
forenoon.

The Land Ordinance of 1785 set up the method of surveying the land that was acquired from
great Britian at the end of the American Revolution.as a result of the Treaty of Paris that same year
The dimensions of the congressional townships ( not to be confused with the county townships) were
six miles by six miles. That area was divided into 36 one mile by one mile sections. I section
contains 640 acres, and half section 320 acres a quarter section, 160 acres, which of course
could be ...and was of course often divided in to four 40 acre plots.. thus the expression of
upper forty and lower forty. If any of the students can take a look at deeds of their property
they will see the legal description the way it was done in this country since 1785. For what it is
worth the original survey began at the Eastern Border of Ohio and moved westward.
Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in the planning and passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785 .