The stereotypical image of the pioneer frontiersman has been one of ultimate failure as the region became more settled. Over time, once-proud hunter-warriors became relegated to the fringes of society, passing away in relative poverty. Another image focuses on the futility of frontiersmen’s efforts to adapt to change in the late eighteenth century, notably in their attempts to forge careers as land surveyors. Daniel Boone in particular has been portrayed as a substandard surveyor whose inaccurate claims were unable to withstand legal scrutiny. But is this a fair assessment of the frontiersman surveyor?
The purpose of this paper will be to use a combination of surveys, land case depositions, tax assessments, and personal recollections to argue that the surveying skills of frontiersmen have been dramatically underrated in popular memory as well as contemporary historiography. The paper shows that frontier surveyors translated their extensive practical knowledge of the region into surveys whose quality matched, and in many cases exceeded, surveys made by trained members of the elite. The paper looks in particular at how Boone’s surveys fared in comparison to others when it came to “closing” the boundaries of tracts.
The paper concludes that there were other, more important sources to Boone’s legal troubles besides “inaccurate surveys.” The chaos of the Kentucky land system was the direct consequence of policies enacted by the Virginia state legislature, the engrossing practices of elite speculators, and the technical limitations inherent in the methods that all local surveyors employed. Frontiersmen such as Boone failed not as surveyors but as entrepreneurs embedded in a legal, political, and economic space where privileged actors had greater advantage and their own frontier knowledge was of less use. By contrast, frontiersman surveyors succeeded dramatically in producing private property, promoting settlement, and creating authority for landowners on the expanding American frontier.
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