The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959 Page: 176
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
tance north of El Paso. The formal agreement was made and
signed by the two commissioners and the Mexican surveyor,
Salazar Ylarregui. In the absence of A. B. Gray who had not yet
arrived on the scene, Lieutenant Whipple, the acting surveyor,
signed the document, though he registered a protest with Bartlett
against the northern location of the initial point.3" By April 24,
the observations had been made, and in a brief ceremony a
great stone marker was placed at the Rio Grande at 32 22' north
latitude. Cond6 and Bartlett then ordered their surveyors into
the field west of the Rio Grande.86 Headquarters were established
at the Santa Rita copper mine, where, surrounded by Apaches
and Navajos who ran off the horses and mules and boldly pilfered
the camp's supplies, both commissioners somehow managed to
keep parties at work on the survey."7
On July 9g, 1851, the official American surveyor, A. B. Gray,
arrived at the copper mines from Texas where he had been con-
valescing from a severe illness. One look at the Bartlett-Cond6
agreement convinced him that the United States had been duped.
He stopped all surveying work on the line until a new confer-
ence with Cond6 could be held which would set matters right.38
Shortly before Gray arrived at the copper mines, Lieutenant
Colonel James Duncan Graham of the topographical engineers
had also arrived at El Paso ready to begin his work as "astron-
omer and head of the scientific party" of the boundary commis-
sion. He subsequently ordered Lieutenant Whipple to report to
him at El Paso which, of course, insured the suspension of all
American surveying activity west of the Rio Grande."" Even
before Colonel Graham left Washington he had unofficially pro-
tested the Bartlett-Cond6 agreement for substantially the same
reason that had prompted Gray to do so.40
The three scientific men of the commission, Gray, Graham,
s5Whipple to Bartlett, El Paso, December 12, 1850, Senate Executive Documents,
32nd Cong., Ist Sess. (Serial No. 626), Document No. 119, p. 247.
SeBartlett, Personal Narrative, I, 181.
s71bid., 346.
88A. B. Gray, "Report and Map, relative to the Mexican Boundary," Senate
Executive Documents, 33rd Cong., and Sess. (Serial No. 752), Document No. 55,
pp. 21-23.
s9Ibid., 32nd Cong., Ist Sess. (Serial No. 626), Document No. i9g, p. 114.
4olbid.176
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959, periodical, 1959; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101173/m1/219/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.