Russell vs. Maxwell (5)

Supplemental Topic

The plats labeled “1869 plat” and “1872 plat” are copies of the original plats which were filed at the Surveyor General’s Office and are now filed in the BLM State Office. The “1869 plat” is the exterior plat showing the survey of the boundaries of the townships in the area and the “1872 plat” is the township plat. The plats labeled “WO 1872 plat” and “WO 1881 plat” are the duplicate copies of the original township plats. They were filed in the Washington D.C. Office of the General Land Office and are now located at the BLM, Eastern States Office.

As you review the plats, consider the following:

• The two 1872 plats should be identical, one is the original and one is the duplicate, however they are not.
• The original plat shows the Beaubien and Miranda Grant and lotting of the public land closing against it but the duplicate shows a normal township with a pencil line labeled “N. Boundary B & M Grant” in a slightly different location than shown on the original and no lotting against it.
• The “WO 1881 plat” is a duplicate plat but there is no original 1881 plat on file in the BLM State Office.
• The 1881 duplicate plat and 1872 original plat report identical information for the land outside the grant but the 1881 plat shows no survey information for the rectangular survey within the grant.

Why would the GLO issue a patent to Russell when the plat clearly shows that section 22 is within the Grant?

The 1872 original and duplicate plats were certainly identical when they were signed by the Surveyor General. Neither would have shown the Beaubien and Miranda Grant boundary because at the time of the rectangular survey the Grant had not been surveyed and the GLO believed the Grant boundary was farther west. When the Grant boundary was surveyed in 1878, it became apparent that the rectangular survey overlapped the Grant.

The Surveyor General undoubtedly realized that the 1872 township plat required correction and simply added the Grant boundary to the original plat and created lotting against it for all the sections outside the Grant. Adding subsequent survey data to an original plat was not uncommon, but additional marginal data and a second signature block was normally added. In this case, for some reason, the plat contains no indication that the plat was ever altered in any way. The Surveyor General did not have access to the duplicate plat to add the new date so he created a new plat (the WO 1881 plat) with only the Grant boundary and rectangular data outside the Grant represented.

The result was a single plat in the Surveyor General’s Office dated 1872 and two plats in the Washington Office dated 1872 and 1881.

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