There are a huge number of ancient maps in the public domain online. Most of which are marked and therefore relatively easy to link. These maps have been in circulation for a long time and almost all interesting places on them have been “knocked out” by search engines over the years. But there is another type of map that is ignored: PGM (general survey plans).

Characteristics of PGM:

Good scale (1-2 versts per inch)

Very detailed (all settlements, farmsteads, roads and point objects are shown)

The year of publication is usually from 1700 to 1820 - i.e. the most interesting in monetary terms

Relatively little used by search engines due to the complexity of working with them

Linking a PGM is a complex and very time-consuming task:

First you need to accurately glue the card into one sheet. This is complicated by the fact that the number of fragments reaches fifty! In addition, maps are often glued to the canvas with a gap, which also requires preliminary gluing of the map sheets themselves, after which they are glued together into a huge canvas.

Color correction and contrast enhancement are carried out. The maps are many years old, they are faded and difficult to read. We are improving the quality of perception of information from maps.

The PGM is not a classic map, but actually a drawing. There is no grid to snap to, and errors in the image of objects can reach large values. And these errors must be minimized.

How do we link cards?

Professional surveyor software is used. Landmarks from modern topographic maps and satellite photographs are taken as reference points. Next, the map is “stretched” onto these reference points using triangulation, linear, affine or polynomial transformations (depending on the map). Several dozen points are used and a projection is selected. At the output, we get a file that is geometrically straightened (at the same time it is, as it were, “crooked” so that the image more accurately matches the terrain). We will convert this file for you into Ozf2 + map file format. Upon request, we add kmz for Google Earth, rmp for Magellan Triton, jnx for new Garmins for free.

What is the accuracy of the binding?

The accuracy of the reference very much depends on the scale of your map, the year of compilation, the region (the further from Moscow the less accurate the maps are), the edition and the degree of change in the terrain in a particular sheet. On average, the error when tying single-layout machines is less than 150 (usually 40-50) meters. For two-verst PGMs - 200-250 (usually 80-120) m. This does not mean that the entire map will have some kind of shift. On the contrary, most of the map will fit perfectly, but in some places there may be an error. On individual sheets far from civilization (Siberia, the Russian north), the error may be higher.

How quickly does the binding occur?

From a day to a week depending on availability. When ordering, the completion date must be indicated. Please take into account the labor intensity of the work and order the binding in advance.

Sources of maps?

Most of the PGMs are freely available, some are in our private collection. You can also send your cards.

How to send cards?

As you wish. We can provide FTP, or upload it to Yandex.Disk, for example, and send the link by email.

Example:

Cost and payment

The cost of linking one county is from 400 to 1500 rubles (depending on the complexity, number of sheets and the need for gluing them together). Payment is possible in electronic currencies, through express payment terminals or in any other convenient way as agreed upon.

The general survey plan is the establishment of the exact boundaries of land plots, peasant communities, cities and villages. Official surveying began in the mid-18th century and continued until the mid-19th. However, back in the 13th century, there were documents describing land boundaries.

Historical essays

Since the 15th century, scribes have been involved in the description of property. They compiled scribe books in which they described the territories (fortresses, churches, villages, etc.), the quality of the land and the number of population.

The reason for the general survey was the lack of a unified system for recording the land fund and the legal disorder of land documents. In 1765, when the decree of Catherine the Great was issued, the territory of the Russian Empire extended from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait, and even Moscow and Kyiv did not have clear borders, let alone the Krasnodar Territory.

For a long time, the description of land plots was carried out by clerks, not land surveyors, entering information into chronicles. Therefore, in practice, land ownership was determined by its occupancy by the master's serfs. Property boundaries are the boundaries of economic areas. And since there were also forests, rivers and lakes, such a system led to constant land disputes, the seizure of “empty” territories by masters and the complication of the right to “enter” someone else’s territory.

The upper strata of society were interested in the plan of general land surveying, striving to define the boundaries of their territory once and for all.

Start

The first land surveying instructions date back to the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna (1754), but no dramatic changes occurred. Only under Catherine II did these documents find their application.

On October 16, 1762, Catherine the Great ordered the Main Boundary Office to be moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow and transferred to the St. Petersburg Patrimonial Office for Ingria (part of the Empire on the border with Sweden). Now the office was located on the territory of the Kremlin and remained there for almost one and a half hundred years, until the beginning of the 20th century.

On December 20, 1965, Catherine ordered new instructions to be prepared based on their 1754 predecessors. The land surveying began with the Manifesto of September 19, 1765 (new style), on the same day the “General Rules” were published, according to which the commission carried out the land surveying procedure. The Empress ordered all approximate boundaries of the lands as of September 19 to be considered correct and legally approved. Land surveying continued until 1861.

Principles of the Land Survey Commission

The land surveyor of the times of Catherine II is not a judge fighting opponents of the reform, as was the case in the time of Elizabeth, but a conciliator of those arguing over land ownership.

The principle of “amicable allotment” of lands by their owners was proposed. It consisted in the fact that the owners independently delineated the boundaries of adjacent territories and indicated outlying villages, mills, rivers, etc. Then they brought the results to the office. For the principle to work, the Ministry deprived those arguing for approximate lands of benefits. In addition, the disputants could receive no more than 10 quarters of the land out of 100, and the rest was sent to the treasury.

Starting from the reign of Catherine the Great, land surveying work was considered sacred, because everyone gradually realized that land wealth was the future of the country.

The procedure for dividing land

At the first level, plans for the dachas of the general survey were drawn up. The task of land surveyors is to measure and establish boundaries between adjacent properties (dachas) based on an amicable divorce or mutual consent of the masters. After such a division, it was possible to move on to the second level of land surveying.

In order to divide large disputed possessions, communal or “nobody’s”, they were first designated by affiliation: church, state, landowner, etc. Then they were divided by population: villages, hamlets, wastelands, forests, etc. Note that these lands are not were divided by the names of the owners, namely by population. The physical boundaries of the territories were interstices or clearings, holes, and pillars at bends.

The earth was measured using an astrolabe or a chain; a general survey plan was drawn up along the magnetic meridian, indicating the deviations of the magnetic needle.

How did cartographers work?

More than 6,000 copies were sent out from the capital to county land survey offices and land surveyors per year. Moreover, first they had to go through many authorities and receive the approval of the empress. Naturally, not a single month or even a year passed from the drawing to approval.

First, a general map of the province or dacha was drawn up, then each house, mill, church, field, etc. was outlined on separate canvases. Notes were added to each map, and an empty table was left next to it for surveyors.

As a result, it turned out that one medium-sized dacha required more than one month of work by several people and more than one canvas.

The first to be surveyed were the dachas and territories close to the capital, which could not be divided in court, and then the cities and counties.

Land surveying procedure

Boundary plans and maps were drawn up not on the initiative of the capital's cartographers, but on the basis of land information from trusted persons in each city or from dacha owners. The procedure for general surveying was as follows:

1. Collection of “diversion tales” from local city governments and owners of adjacent territories.
2. Notification about the start of measuring work.
3. Field work - walking around areas with measuring tools, placing boundary markers.
4. Compilation of field work records, description of actions, measurements.
5. Drawing up boundary books and plans, sending them to territory owners for certification.
6. Introducing amendments and drawing up economic notes to general survey plans.

P.S. Economic notes are an explanation of the numbers on the maps. For convenience, most small buildings or empty areas were marked with numbers so as not to load the map.

First results

During the first year, the commission described 2,710 dacha plots with a total area of ​​1,020,153 acres (about 1,122,168 hectares).

By the end of the 70s of the 18th century, the general survey plan had gained such wide popularity that it was supervised by almost all authorities in the Empire: the Government Senate, the Land Survey Office, and the Land Survey Unit. At the provincial level, land issues were resolved in surveying and intermediary offices that drew up drawings for regional surveying.

Trends in society

Despite the fact that the nobility, in general, was pleased with the reform, the plan for general land surveying greatly excited the minds of the common people. For this reason, the main period of the “census” of lands lasted almost a hundred years (1765-1850). In 1850, a personal decree was issued, which significantly accelerated litigation on the issue of rights to plots and, as a consequence, the land surveying procedure.

Land survey plans by province

At the end of the 18th century, 35 general survey plans (GMP) were drawn up and partially implemented. The first date back to 1778; before that, private territories were subject to land surveying.

1. Moscow;
2. Kharkovskaya;
3. Voronezh;
4. Novgorodskaya;
5. Ryazan;
6. Smolenskaya;
7. Yaroslavskaya;
8. Vladimirskaya;
9. Kaluzhskaya;
10. Mogilevskaya;
11. Tverskaya;
12. Orlovskaya;
13. Kostroma;
14. Olonetskaya;
15. St. Petersburg;
16. Tambovskaya;
17. Penza;
18. Vologda;
19. Vitebskaya;
20. Tula;
21. Kazanskaya;
22. Simbirskaya;
23. Orenburgskaya;
24. Nizhny Novgorod;
25. Saratovskaya;
26. Samara;
27. Kherson;
28. Perm;
29. Vyatskaya;
30. Ekaterinoslavskaya;
31. Arkhangelskaya;
32. Tauride;
33. Astrakhan;
34. Pskovskaya;
35. Kurskaya.

Land surveying, according to the new instructions of 1765, began in the Moscow province, so to speak, as a test. Seeing the obvious success of the reform, the Empress ordered to survey the Sloboda province and the Vladimir province. Each plan map consisted of several parts, so as not to miss small details: farms, mills, churches, etc. Each part described one or two miles of terrain. One mile is 420 meters. Therefore, they were completely drawn only in the 80s.

As an example, it is worth considering the capital's work - plans for the general survey of the Moscow province.

Examples of boundary plans

Tula and Moscow were the first provinces to undergo land surveying. They were adjacent to each other and were ideal for “testing” the reform in large parts of Russia.

The first plan for the Moscow province was completed in 1779. It was compiled from 26 county plans. The general map looked like this.

From this map, plans for the general survey of the Tula province, Kaluga, Oryol and other border lands were drawn. Behind the border ones came the distant provinces, then the outlying ones.

Special survey

In land disputes, agreement between owners was achieved with great difficulty, despite the possibility of amicable challenges and repeated invitations to land surveyors. In addition, inviting a land surveyor at one’s own expense was considered bad faith, so the nobles were in no hurry to resolve disputes. The second problem of general land surveying was the attribution of parts of cities and fortresses to dachas by land surveyors.

To resolve this issue, the government independently began surveying the border properties. A decree on special land surveying was issued in 1828, along with new instructions for land surveyors. The special land survey was designed for the initiative of the owners, but it was not so easy to force the conservative nobles to come to an agreement with their neighbors. In addition, there were legal obstacles.

The plans for the dachas of the general and special surveys were sometimes strikingly different from each other.

Several years ago, almost simultaneously with the 3 layouts, even older PGM maps became available. General survey plans were mostly drawn up before 1800 and have a layout scale.

The usefulness of such a map in searching with a metal detector is 100% obvious, but... I rarely open them, although there are all the places where I dig. The first disappointment came when I couldn’t tie them. Secondly, what can I see on them that is not on the 3rd layout? There is no fair where the tables were (which is a pity).

It seems that there are old maps of high detail, on which even individual houses are indicated (in some places, barns, cool!)... But it is very difficult to get real practical use from them. Okay, it’s impossible to pin down exactly by coordinates, but flaws appear even in small things.

On the PGM map there are 3 houses indicated in the village, at the digging point there are 5 of them. According to the map they are in a row, in reality there are 50 meters of “chess” between them. And any discrepancy between such cards (and their summation) turns out to be wasted time.

Story 1

We found a farmstead on the PGM, which was not on the three-layout map... Moreover, I know that the layouts have a very large error, and you shouldn’t rely on the coordinates. “I became attached” to the hills, which seemed to remain in place and were visible on the General Staff.

We arrived, wandered around for 3 hours, trying to locate the house... Moreover, they weren’t looking for bricks, then such houses were made of wood - they were looking for clay shards, “calling out” horse meat, or even anything from that time. Result 0.

There were several such attempts, and not only me.

Story 2

We gathered for the plowed village. Based on the layout, they estimated the central estate, which was also called a stone house (at that time this was a big deal). 2 hours passed... As a result, the finds actually appeared only when we moved 200 meters from the initially planned point.

If we had arrived and immediately embarked on a broad reconnaissance (instead of marking time in the “exact” place), we would have localized it much faster.

Bottom line

So it turned out that my main cards are . Accuracy is passable, detail is average. The most important thing is that I don’t waste so much time with them when localizing on site.

I specifically asked my comrades - does anyone have a real example of how a PGM card led to a cop’s point? Moreover, such that the PGM is the only source of information, and without it these finds would not have happened. So far we don’t have such an example, although most have PGM cards))

P.S. Please note ➨ ➨ ➨ Bomb theme - . Take a look, you won't regret it.