lege or its substitute were required to pay the trustees one-sixth part of the fees of their office, and also to make an annual report of the surveys entered in their books in the course of that period.[1]
Whilst the ordinary surveyor received his commission from the Surveyor-General, his deputy, or William and Mary College, according to the period of the seventeenth century in which he lived, his appointment seems to have been made at the suggestion of the justices of the court of the county in which he resided, and they were ordered by Act of Assembly to select only such persons as men experienced in surveying would recommend.[2] The Governor also possessed the right to suspend any surveyor for sufficient cause.[3] Members of this profession formed a society, which met at Jamestown, where it was often consulted in disputes as to boundaries.[4] Many of the surveyors were men of the first consequence in the Colony in point of character, ability, and wealth. In the last decade of the century, — and there was no difference in this respect in the earlier periods, — the list included such distinguished citizens as Theodorick Bland, Thomas Swann, Miles Cary, James Minge, Edmund Scarborough, and William Moseley. The number of positions occupied
- ↑ Surveyor of a County’s Commission, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. I, p. 240.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 404. This was in 1654.
- ↑ “Particulars of some of ye Grievances Presented by Philip Ludwell,” British State Papers, America and West Indies, No. 512; McDonald Papers, vol. VII, pp. 289, 290, Va. State Library. In 1688, Mr. Arthur Allen was suspended, and doubtless others at different periods.
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, April 13, 1683. On the same occasion all complaints against the action or conduct of individual surveyors were heard. See the General Notice of Deputy Surveyor-General Philip Ludwell, bearing date Aug. 2, 1686 (Records of York County, vol. 1684-1687, p. 215), summoning all the surveyors in the Colony to assemble at Jamestown at the October General Court.
