Sep 28, 2023 - Sale 2646

Sale 2646 - Lot 231

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(PENNSYLVANIA.) Letters of the well-known Lukens family relating to frontier land surveys. 38 letters (most addressed to surveyor John Lukens by his sons Charles and Jesse) plus 2 land surveys by Charles Lukens, various sizes, in one folder; generally worn with some separations at folds and occasional loss of text. Various places, 1767-1783 and undated
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John Lukens (1720-1789) was the official surveyor-general of Pennsylvania and Delaware colonies from 1763 to 1775, and then resumed the same role for the state of Pennsylvania in 1781. He oversaw surveys for land patents, canal routes, and Pennsylvania's borders. This collection consists of letters between John Lukens and his surveyor sons Charles Lukens (1744-1784) and Jesse Lukens (1748-1775): 28 from Charles to his father, 5 from Jesse to his father, 4 from Charles to Jesse, and a lone 1782 letter from John Lukens to son Charles.

Surveying is now a fairly peaceful profession, but in this era, it sometimes involved conflicts with American Indians, squatters, and conflicting title claimants. Jesse Lukens died on Christmas 1775 while helping to evict a Connecticut settlement in the Wyoming River valley. That tragedy is not covered in the correspondence, but controversy often haunts these letters. On 19 June 1769, Charles reports on the informal handshake nature of some frontier property lines. Regarding a property claim, "I would not execute his judg't, it is very true. I was very loathe to do it, as it is at the same time depriving John Shertly, a poor old man near 70 years of age, of the most valuable part of his plantation. . . . If those lines which are made by the consent of parties are to be broke when either party gets cross & dissatisfied, the country will be filled with inumerable disputes. There is throughout this county where the lands are not surveyed lines agreed on amongst the people themselves, which if they can be broke will be of bad consequence & render surveying extremely troublesome." On 30 August 1769 he describes a property line settled by an ad hoc committee of four neighbors: "Julius, tho not pleased with it, shook hands with Bruner and drank to each & both went home contented." On 11 July 1770, Charles complains that "Mr. Physick and Tilghman has taken a vast deal of pains to furnish themselves with the bare storys of a foolish Dutchman, in order to have something to say ag't me. . . . The island called Conestago Island they say is not near large enough, because a Dutchman (who don't know what an acre is) says so."

Jesse's first letter is dated from York, 3 September 1769: "Our accts of the Indians is all peaceable." Similarly, in Jesse's last letter in this lot, dated 3 November 1773, he tells his father "Charley is up at Bald Eagle. We have had some noise ab't the Indians, but I believe it has been raised by some designing people."

The lone letter by the patriarch John Lukens is dated from Philadelphia, 16 July 1782, written in a shaky hand and with full Quaker formality. It discusses a survey of Eel Town.