CHAPTER I.
General Remarks
If all existing land-marks
were obliterated, leaving no means of identifying the
surface of country comprising Monroe County, Iowa, the
boundary lines would be relocated by going down to the
mouth of the Arkansas River, where there is an imaginary
line running east and west, known as a "base line."
Here the surveyor would find another imaginary line,
crossing the base line at right angles and extending
north and south. This latter line is called a meridian
line, and that one which the surveyor would have to
follow in the search for Monroe County is known as the
Fifth Principal Meridian.
Beginning where these two
lines intersect, and extending east and west, and north
and south, are lines marked by spaces 6 miles apart,
which are numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. Six miles north of
the base line, on the meridian line, township 1 is marked,
and the township adjoining it on the west would be described
as township 1, range 2, west. Proceeding northward until
township 71 is reached, here the surveyor should turn
his course due west, and proceed a distance of 16 townships,
as indicated by the sixteenth range line west from the
Fifth Principal Meridian. These range lines, which are
those spacings on the base line, are exactly 6 miles
apart; but, in order to keep them equidistant, their
course has to be slightly rectified about every 40 miles,
else the distance between them would increase with the
curvature of the earth. These shiftings of lines are
known as "correction lines." These lines are
24 miles apart north of the base line, and guide or
meridian lines are 54 miles apart. Meridian lines are
astronomical lines.
By following the course
indicated, the surveyor would arrive at Urbana Township,
situated in the southeast corner of Monroe County. This
township is therefore described as township 71, range
16, west of the Fifth Principal
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Meridian, and by this system, all the
land in the State of Iowa was surveyed by the Government.
In making this Government
survey, section lines were also run off, 1 mile apart,
east and west, and north and south; and as each congressional
township was laid out 6 miles square, there are 36 sections
in each Congressional township, and 640 acres in a section.
In all cases where the exterior
lines of townships to be divided into sections and half-sections
exceeds or does not extend 6 miles, the excess or deficiency
is specially noted, and added to or deducted from the
western or northern ranges of sections; hence fractional
subdivisions of sections are found on their northern
or western borders.
To number the sections in
a township, beginning is made at the northeast corner
section of the township, and the sections are numbered
from 1 to 36, by numbering from east to west and from
west to east alternately. Thus section 6 is the northwest
corner section, while section 7 adjoins it on the south,
and section 12 would be next south of section 1; section
13, likewise, would be the second section south of section
1, and so on.
Monroe County is in the
second tier of counties from the southern line of the
State; and is the fifth county in the tier, from the
Mississippi River. All the counties in the tier west
of Henry County have but 12 Congressional townships
each, having 4 townships in tiers running east and west,
and 3 north and south. Monroe, therefore, is less by
4 townships than her northern and southern neighbors.
The townships of Monroe
County lie in the following in order, enumerating them
from east to west, and beginning at the southeast corner
of the county: Urbana, Monroe, Franklin, and Jackson;
Mantua, Troy, Guilford, and Wayne; Pleasant, Bluff Creek,
Union, and Cedar.
Albia, the county seat,
is situated in the northern half of section 22.
Monroe County is from 500
to 700 feet above the level of the sea, and varies somewhat,
in both geological arrangement and exterior character.
While its drift formation is not different from that
of its neighboring counties, the southwestern portion
of Monroe County is probably outside of the region of
the great coal-producing portion of the lower coal measure
of the State. While this fact has not hitherto been
positively admitted by geologists, investigations of
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recent years prove pretty conclusively
that the townships of Jackson and Franklin lie west
of the western border of the lower coal-bearing district,
and it is quite probable that the western portion of
Monroe Township also extends beyond these limits, as
the lower coal-bed apparently disappears at the town
of Moravia.
The southwestern portion
of the county is a plateau, which seems to blend abruptly
into the geological structure of the great southwestern
water-shed. Its drift deposits are of greater thickness
than those in eastern Iowa and other localities within
the district of the Des Moines basin.
While it is true that the
lower coal-beds extend farther westward, along the Cedar
Creek, to the north of this locality, it is barely possible
that the coal worked on Cedar Creek and White-breast
may lie at a great depth beneath a vast accumulation
of drift. If it does, it probably lies at a depth of
from 300 to 400 feet, as a drilling was made at Moravia
to a depth of 300 feet without finding any trace of
the lower coal-bed.
The only fact to encourage
this conjecture is that the Cedar basin seems to have
cut itself to a great depth in this drift deposit.
Monroe and Urbana Townships
occupy a lower elevation, and are drained by the headwaters
of Soap and Avery creeks.
Little or no prospecting
for coal has ever been made in Urbana Township, yet
it is quite probable that in addition to the upper coal-bed,
which crops out everywhere along Avery Creek, and which
is about 3 feet in thickness, with an interval of fire-clay
of about 8 inches in the center, the locality is underlaid
by a rich deposit of the lower coal, which in Monroe
County reaches a thickness of 8 feet in some localities.
As the upper portion of
Monroe Township, particularly a few miles north of Foster,
is on rising ground, no special effort has yet been
made to locate the coal, which doubtless lies at a depth
of about 300 feet; and as Troy Township rises still
higher, prospectors have not yet been tempted to make
much search in this township, in the vicinity of Albia.
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By referring to a profile of the C., B.
& Q. Railroad survey it will be seen that Albia
is situated on a high knoll or eminence, and whether
the coal strata pass through this rise, unbroken, is
a matter for conjecture.
Not until the Government
had surveyed Iowa into Congressional townships were
the counties established and surveyed. Counties were
created by legislative acts of the Territorial Council
and General Assembly, which later took the place of
the Council when the State was admitted into the Union.
The State Constitution provides that in organizing a
county it shall be composed of not less than 12 Congressional
townships.
As all surveys are subject
to slight inaccuracies, later surveys do not exactly
conform to the original Government survey. For instance,
a county surveyor, beginning to survey a township, starts
at the southeast section and runs north. The section
lines which the Government has established he adopts
as his survey—i.e., he makes his own
measurements to conform to them, the variation in measurements
of the two surveys result in what are known as "fractional
tracts," and as the surveyor runs westward after
reaching the north line, these same variations occur
on the west line of a section. Thus fractional tracts
are found on the north and west lines of townships,
and what was intended for a forty-acre tract by the
first survey becomes by the second either more or less.
Deeds of transfer are for this reason worded thus, in
speaking of the amount to be transferred: "More
or less, according to the United States survey of the
same."
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