This increase in population and roads spawned land speculators eager to have new towns surveyed and divided into lots. As a result, Lincoln frequently endorsed petitions requesting the legislature to create a road. Along with the growing support for internal improvements, new roads needed to be marked and mapped. With the large influx of people emigrating into the prairies of central Illinois, there was a demand for surveyors to re-survey, for legal ownership, previously purchased federal lands in order to record legal land ownership and to settle boundary disagreements. 2 Accepting the challenge, Lincoln “went at it,” with a manner similar to how he would later describe his self-taught course in law: “… borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest.” On Lincoln’s taking up surveying, Carl Sandburg commented, “… he had to transfer his blank ignorance of the science and art of surveying into a thorough working knowledge and skill.” 3 Land needed surveying and Lincoln needed an income. This procured bread and kept soul and body together.” 1 During the summer of 1833, John Calhoun, the Sangamon County Surveyor, offered Lincoln the deputy surveyor position for the northwestern part of Sangamon County in the surrounding area of New Salem, much of what would become Menard County in 1839. He accepted, procured a compass and chain, studied Flint, and Gibson a little, and went at it. Scripps in 1860, Lincoln explained: “The Surveyor of Sangamon, offered a depute to A that portion of his work which was within his part of the county. Describing his years at New Salem in the autobiography sent to John L.
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