An earlier version of this information was published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia in 1978 (Vol. 32, No. 3). That article was the result of the author's work with early deeds and land grants, an interest originally prompted by Edward F. Heite. His article,  "Boxing a Very Old Compass" in the September 1970 Quarterly Bulletin, was the only such help available at the time. Now  the Library of Virginia has made digital images of Virginia Land Patents and Grants available on line, and many people are trying their hands at plotting the land boundary descriptions contained in those patents. This revised guide, with the Old Compass and Bearing Equivalent Table, is offered in the hope that it will be helpful to those who want to try their hands at drawing the boundaries of old Virginia land tracts.

Historians and genealogists who have researched a specific Virginia family or location in any detail have found it difficult to pinpoint land boundaries made in Virginia in the seventeenth- and eighteenth- centuries. The Virginia land patent books have been recognized as a treasure trove of information since at least 1885, but the published abstracts, which are the most widely used form of these records, leave out the very information necessary for precise location of a specific tract. To locate land patent boundaries for a particular time in a specific place, one must use full boundary descriptions from the patent books and work with as many tracts within the chosen area as can be found. Fortunately, digital images of the patent book pages are now on line at the Library of Virginia. If deeds from county court records are available, these can be of great help in verifying boundary descriptions.

It is practical to limit the area to be plotted by choosing natural boundaries such as rivers and large creeks which have retained their early names into the present. This simplifies the initial sorting of descriptions and information. One must also determine the names of the county and parish in which the chosen area lies. The three volumes by Charles Francis Cocke, Parish Lines Diocese of Virginia, Parish Lines Diocese of Southern Virginia, and Parish Lines Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, obtainable from the Library of Virginia, are extremely helpful for this purpose.

A good base map of the area to be plotted is essential. Since many early boundaries were natural (such as rivers, creeks, ridges, ravines, and hills), the U. S. Geological Survey quadrangles, which show topography, wooded areas, and road systems, are very good base maps. The 7.5 minute series quadrangles, on a scale of one inch equals 2,000 feet, are the most convenient size. On that scale, one hundred acres of land is about one inch square. Other necessary pieces of equipment include an engineer's scale, a 360 degree protractor, and tracing paper. Also helpful, but not absolutely necessary, are a couple of small triangles for straightedges and line paralleling, and graph paper.

Accurate copies of the boundary descriptions to be used are necessary to any investigation. Since these may consist largely of compass bearings and distances expressed in poles or chains, one must be sufficiently familiar with surveying terms to be able to recognize and transcribe these descriptions accurately, if one expects to plot them with any success. The accompanying Bearing Equivalent Table, which lists the most frequently encountered bearings and their equivalents in degrees, should be of help.

Bearings and distances must be accurately converted into their modern equivalents, for if the conversion is in error, the result will be incomprehensible and will not fit neatly among the roads, creeks, and rivers of the base map. The task is laborious, but with perseverance it becomes easier, and the results can be amazingly accurate. 

Distances in land patents are usually described in chains or poles. Although modern chains are sixty-six feet long, the chains used in seventeenth century descriptions were sometimes two-pole chains. A pole is sixteen and one half feet long, as are rods and perches. Though perches are also units of square measurement, they were sometimes used as linear units in early land boundary descriptions. A two-pole chain is thirty-three feet long. Occasionally "primes" are encountered, and they are tenths of a pole. A table of the most commonly encountered terms is HERE.

The compass bearings used in seventeenth century land patent boundary descriptions generally follow standard navigational compass bearings or some divisions of these. The compass is a circle divided into four quadrants, each containing ninety degrees of arc. These quadrants are separated by four lines radiating from the center of the compass circle outward, one line pointing in each of the four cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West. The navigational compass divides each ninety degree quadrant into eight equal parts. The lines dividing these parts are all standard compass directions and are shown on the accompanying Old Compass.

When the navigational compass was first used for land surveying in Virginia, few variations from these standard bearings were necessary because new lines were being cut through virgin lands, frequently with no adjoining property owners, and boundary lines were put wherever was most convenient, often running simply North, South, East, and West. As Virginia grew more densely populated it became necessary for land surveyors to respect existing property lines which had arisen through divisions of large tracts and the use of irregular natural boundaries. To determine the direction and length of a line of marked trees in a forest is more demanding than drawing a line on paper that may not be contested or perhaps even physically located during the tenure of the surveyor.

The earliest Virginia boundary descriptions of large tracts usually mentioned only the acreage and prominent natural boundaries. After an area was sufficiently well populated that tracts adjoined each other, names of adjoiners and the compass directions of their lands from the described tract were given.

The standard navigational compass seems to have been adequate for surveying in Virginia until the middle of the seventeenth century. By the 1660s, the use of further divisions of this compass had become necessary for the accurate description of existing land boundaries in the more thickly settled areas of Virginia. These further divisions were described as fractions of the arc between two standard compass points.

The Bearing Equivalent Table is divided into six columns. Reading from the left, they are Old Compass Points, their equivalent Decimal Degrees of arc from zero to 360, the four Quadrants into which they fall (North East, South East, South West, North West), and the equivalent modern compass bearings separated into Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds. To find the equivalent of SSE 3/4 S, for example, the degree equivalent on the same line in the three right columns (14 degrees, 3 minutes, 45 seconds) is inserted between the two letters on the same line in the Quadrants column (SE) which gives a bearing of S 14 degrees, 3 minutes, 45 seconds E.

Since we now divide a surveying compass into 360 degrees, and each quadrant into ninety degrees, the arc between the old navigational compass points equals ninety degrees divided by eight, or eleven and a quarter degrees. Therefore, a bearing of ENE 2/3 N, for example, indicates a direction 2/3 of the arc between two compass points, to the North of the standard compass point ENE (East North East). To plot this bearing using a modern protractor, we must first consult the Bearing Equivalent Table to find the degree equivalent of ENE. It is in the Northeast quadrant and is equal to a bearing of North 67 degrees 30 minutes East. By looking at the Bearing Equivalent Table, we see that a line pointing straight North is on a bearing of zero degrees, and a line pointing straight East is on a bearing of ninety degrees. So, as the bearing turns toward North it will decrease in degrees, and as it turns East it will increase. Since the difference in degrees between ENE and the next compass point to the North of it, NE by E (North East by East), is eleven and a quarter degrees, to find the bearing equivalent of ENE 2/3 N, we must find 2/3 of eleven and a quarter degrees (seven and one half degrees) and subtract that amount from the ENE bearing (North 67 1/2 East). This tells us that ENE 2/3 N is equal to N 60 E (North 60 degrees East).

After the compass readings are accurately converted to modern bearings and the distances into feet, the boundary description can be plotted on the base map scale. Graph paper is good for the first plotting because the grid lines on it make handy references for the North-South and East-West lines. Transparent graph paper may be used, or the initial plotting may be traced onto unlined tracing paper or onion skin.

Because magnetic North never has been stationary, each separate boundary may be referenced from a different North. In practical terms, this means that two tracts which obviously adjoin because of their matching shapes and line lengths may be described with different sets of compass bearings. If the bearings differences between two tracts are fairly consistent, and other parts of the descriptions agree, it is safe to assume they adjoin.

Many of these old descriptions do not give bearings and distances for the entire circumference of the tract. They often include courses such as "along the creek" or "down the mill run as it winds." Those that do describe a complete boundary with bearings and distances should "close;" the point of beginning and point of ending should be the same point, and there should be no gap between them. If there is a gap, then there is error in the description, and this often happens. The most common errors of this sort are reversed directions of bearings, and errors in distances caused by dropping one digit of a two digit length (SW for NE, 5 for 50). These are discovered by trial and error and persistence. Two descriptions of the same line from adjoining tracts make good "error finders." If one tract closes and the other does not, use the description of the joint line from the boundary of the tract that closes.

Because the early surveys did not meet modern standards of accuracy, plotting these old boundary descriptions on a large scale or with computer programs will show that none of them closes exactly. However, an acceptable closure should "appear" to close when plotted on a scale of one inch equals 2,000 feet. If it doesn't even appear to close at that scale, there is considerable error in the boundary description.

After all descriptions for a given area are plotted on the same scale and those that adjoin are fitted together, they can be put on tracing paper and laid over the base map. Then they are simply turned about, keeping North in approximately the right direction, until all the rivers, creeks, ravines, hills, etc. on the base map are aligned with their described positions in the boundary descriptions. All of this is less complicated to do than to describe, and it is the only sure way to locate the boundaries of these old tracts and the landmarks to which they refer.

Computer programs are available now to draw these boundaries from descriptions. They may be preferable for large projects involving many tract descriptions. They also present challenges, however, such as expense and time required to learn to use them. Even then, it still may be necessary to convert old metes and bounds into modern measurement systems before using them in these programs. For plotting one or two tract boundaries, the "old fashioned way" is simpler and cheaper.

Some examples of plotted land tracts will be added to this web site as time permits.