The G est S tandardof MeasureEven before Joseph Gest came along, in the very early days of the Ohio Territory, anyone with the proper equipment could survey land. This resulted in many landowners performing the task themselves. Imprecise measurement, confusion over pre-Revolutionary War surveying systems, and other discrepancies led to numerous land disputes. The Symmes Purchasethe privately purchased land tract that includes Cincinnatiwas quickly and sloppily surveyed, causing gross distortions of sometimes 100 acres or more. Landowners paid for land that wasnt theirs, and in 1810, one defrauded customer torched John Symmes house, burning up the field notes and most of the plats of the original surveys. Thus, Gests and Joseph Earnshaws later surveys of the city became the earliest surviving survey records of Cincinnati.Purchase was so badly managed and the surveys so poor that much of the large land sales by Congress could not happen. 63Another surveying inaccuracy occurred within the city of Cincinnati when Joseph Gest, the city surveyor from 1819 to 1844, replaced his brass rule with one imported from England. 64Gest incorrectly measured many of the city blocks because the imported brass rule was a thirty-second of an inch longer than the specified two feet to allow for ware at the ends. 65This error Gest unknowingly made was finally discovered after much of the area within the citys basin was already surveyed incorrectly, adding approximately 200,000 extra square feet, or a half a downtown block, to the citys area. 66Instead of re-surveying many of the city blocks, a Gest Standard of Measurement was developed and a formula was created that converted the Gest Standard to the US Standard, by adding 1.5625 inches to every 100 feet. 67Joseph Gest was not the only individual who performed early surveys of Cincinnati. Most anyone with the proper equipment could take on the task, including landowners themselves. This practice led to land disputes, most of which occurred south of the Ohio River. In Kentucky, Revolutionary War military land grants had been surveyed using the metes and bounds system, based on indiscriminate locations to mark the lines and corners within a survey. 6823