Due to human error, various compromises and …

1 By Bill Carey, the Tennessee History GuyHISTORY LESSONA couple of months ago, I wrote a column about the bor-der between Tennessee and Georgia. I pointed out that,by decree, the boundary was supposed to be at 35 degreesnorth latitude. However, because of the human error inherentwith surveying equipment used in the early 19th century, theboundary is south of that latitude by about one mile. This hasannoyed public officials of the state of Georgia over the yearsbecause the mistake has prevented the Peach State frombeing able to draw water from the Tennessee the time I hinted that the Georgia-Tennessee border wasactually accurate compared to the Tennessee-Kentucky bor-der. Let me amplify on that. The Tennessee-Kentucky border is not straight. It shifts upand down multiple times on its long journey from theAppalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River.

2 Mostnotably, in the area of the LandBetween the Lakes, the borderjumps north by a couple of milesand then, where the TennesseeRiver moves into Kentucky, shiftssouth about 12 miles creatingwhat some refer to as Tennessee s chimney. The boundary thenproceeds in a nearly perfectlystraight line all the way to theMississippi m sure that a lot of peoplehave wondered, like me, why theborder jumps up and down theway it does. It turns out that there are people who have researched thistopic. James Sames, now deceased, once wrote a book on thesubject called Four Steps West. About 20 years ago, theTennessee Association of Professional Surveyors and Ken-tucky Association of Professional Surveyors reproduced hisbook and did extensive research on the topic, photographingstone markers that were placed along the boundary in an Internet search on the subject yielded lots of informa-tion, some of which I actually suspect to be true (not alwaysthe case with Internet searches).

3 To summarize what I ve discovered: Tennessee s borderwith Kentucky and Virginia is, for the eastern two-thirds ofthe Volunteer State, nowhere near where government decreesaid it was supposed to be. The main reasons for this arehuman error and imperfect surveying equipment. Along theway, the placement of the bound-ary was also influenced by dis-agreements among surveyors, compromise between arguingstates and countless other rea-sons. In total, the mislocated bor-der cost Kentucky about 2,500square miles, according toSames for the Tennessee-Ken-tucky border in West Tennessee,it is almost a perfect straight lineTennessee-Kentucky border didn t turn out as straight as it was supposed to beDue to human error, various compromises and unreliable surveying equipment, Tennessee's northern boundary greatly shifts inplaces. Map extracted from Henry Schenck Tanner's 1834 map of the United , Kentucky and Virginiameet at this spot near the Cum-berland 2011TN HISTORY FEB 11_TECA_0211_ 1/19/11 7:56 PM Page 7and is located almost exactly where itis supposed to be.

4 Here are some details:In Colonial times, the King of Eng-land decreed that the boundarybetween Virginia and North Carolinabe located at 36 degrees 30 minutesnorth latitude. After Kentucky brokeaway from Virginia and Tennesseebroke away from North Carolina, thisboundary line was continued west allthe way to the Mississippi official border was laid out bydifferent people and in different eras,using celestial navigation readings todetermine location on the Earth s sur-face and magnetic compass headingsto draw the line between places wherecelestial shots were made. Generally,these early surveyors left marks intrees to show where they left theboundary line, which often left sur-veyors of future generations in confu-sion as to which marks were left byofficial surveyors and which were leftby someone trying to trick 1728, a team led by WilliamByrd started surveying the linebetween North Carolina and Virginia,starting at the Atlantic Ocean.

5 Byrd, ina detailed journal he kept of the ven-ture, explained that the team took most of the spring and sum-mer of that year off because of an overabundance of rat-tlesnakes along the way. This original surveying party made it241 miles to about two-thirds of the way across present-dayNorth years later, a group of surveyors led by JoshuaFry and Peter Jefferson started where Byrd left off and made itto about 10 miles east of present-day Bristol. Jefferson, by theway, was the father of Thomas Jefferson, the third president ofthe United 1779, two teams of surveyors picked up about where Fryand Jefferson had left off and drew the line all the way towhere the Tennessee River flows north into Kentucky. Thisgroup consisted of Thomas Walker and Daniel Smith repre-senting Virginia and Richard Henderson and William BaileySmith representing North Carolina.

6 (Daniel Smith, by the way,later built the Rock Castle historic home in present-day Sumn-er County, Tenn., while Richard Henderson is the land specu-lator who sent the first settlers to present-day Nashville.)As it turned out, all three of these surveying generations mis-takenly placed the boundary north by a distance of somewherein the range of five miles to 12 miles. So, instead of the Ken-tucky-Virginia and Tennessee-North Carolina borders being at36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, the line is actually closerto 36 degrees 35 minutes north latitude in East Tennessee and asfar north as 36 degrees 41 minutes north latitude at LandBetween the Lakes as much as 18 miles off! It is easy for usto be smug about these inaccuracies in an era in which some uscarry handheld satellite navigation devices, but if you think it iseasy to calculate your exact location on the planet using a hand-held sextant and magnetic compass, you try the 1779 surveyors picked up the line left by the Jef-ferson/Fry party, the two groups of surveyors argued aboutwhere the line should be.

7 The Walker/Smith party, represent-ing Virginia, believed that the line was at least two milesnorth of where it was supposed to be (in fact, it was a lot far-ther than that). This disagreement is the reason that, today,the border shifts about 10 miles east of present-day Tennessee Magazineby Bill Carey, the Tennessee History GuyHISTORY LESSONPart of the Tennessee-Kentucky border in Robertson County dips drastically to thesouth. The so-called Simpson County Offset was inaccurately drawn because the sur-veying group couldn t obtain astronomical observations due to dense cloud cover andiron ore interference with compass HISTORY FEB 11_TECA_0211_ 1/19/11 7:57 PM Page 8 And for years this caused property disputes all along the Ten-nessee-Kentucky border and the creation of one border known as the Henderson line and another known as the Walk-er line.

8 When I recently visited the Cumberland Gap, I found theplace where the borders of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginiameet. I made the assumption that the borderbetween those states was put near the gapon purpose. In fact, the border between Ten-nessee and Kentucky coincides with thelocation of the actual Cumberland Gap bycoincidence it just so happens to be rightabout where the surveying party believedthe parallel at 36 degrees 30 minutes northlatitude to be. (The Cumberland Gap is, infact, located at about 36 degrees 36 minutesnorth latitude). In 1817, the Chickasaw Indians sold their rights to the land between the Ten-nessee and Mississippi rivers, and that landbecame what we now refer to as West Ten-nessee. By this time it had become obviousto everyone that Tennessee s border withboth Kentucky and Virginia was north ofwhere it was supposed to be.

9 During the nextcouple of years, Tennessee and Kentucky argued over wherethe boundary should be drawn in the newly acquired 1820, Kentucky agreed to leave the border east of theTennessee River where it had been mistakenly placed, solong as the border in the newly claimed land west of the riverwas, in fact, put in the right place. This is why, today, theTennessee-Kentucky border slides southward about 12 milesin the area of Land Between the Lakes, where it meets upwith the surveying line laid out by surveyors Robert Alexan-der and Luke Munsell. That east-west line that Alexanderand Munsell did has to be one of the best lines ever sur-veyed, says Bart Crattie, a Georgia surveyor who has exten-sively researched Tennessee s state of Virginia remained annoyed about the locationof the line for more than a century until the SupremeCourt settled the matter in 1893, ruling in Tennessee s favorthat a boundary line between states or provinces which hasbeen run out, located, and marked upon the earth, and after-wards recognized and acquiesced in by the parties for a longcourse of years, is conclusive.

10 In other words, if you agree tolive with a border for long enough, you forfeit the right tocomplain about , I have always wondered why the Kentucky-Ten-nessee border dips down in Robertson County at SimpsonCounty, Ky. (coincidentally, where Interstate 65 is). I ve always heard that it was called dueling ground because it was a no-man s land between the two states wherepeople could go to duel and avoid laws against it, says myfriend Robert Brandt, author of the fascinating CompassAmerican Guides Tennessee. This is an interesting bit of local legend, but it doesn texplain the origins of the offset. As it turnsout, the so-called Simpson County Offset was caused by human error. When Walkerand Smith surveyed this part of the state inDecember 1779 and January 1780, theywere able to do almost no astronomicalobservations in this part of the state due tocloudy weather.