Surveying Equipment Rentals

SALISBURY -- Harold Hampshire was a dairy farm boy who wanted to be a veterinarian. Instead, he became a World War II plane pilot, then a water meter reader and finally, a surveyor.

Hampshire, 85, is believed to be the oldest working surveyor in the state. Though he no longer works in the field, he rules the roost at the company he founded in 1965 -- Hampshire, Hampshire and Andrews -- and serves as a consultant.

Raised where Sam's Club and Wal-Mart are located off Hampshire Road, Hampshire helped with the family dairy operation -- 16 milking cows. They sold their farm-fresh milk under two names -- Haroldine Dairy and Hampshire Dairy -- and had their own bottling operation.

When he was 20, Hampshire left Salisbury Normal School -- where he hoped to lay the groundwork for becoming a veterinarian -- and joined the Navy in 1942. Eventually he became an Avenger torpedo bomber plane pilot.

"When I came back to the farm after the war, I invested some of my money in cows. I told my father we needed milk producers. He was hung up on registered Gurnseys, but they were not producers. But the Holsteins I wanted were. So I bought three cows. The first cow went through the fence and trampled the neighbor's potato bed. That cost me $150, and the other two cows died within a year of each other. So I told my dad I was going to leave."

Ironically, today a single Haroldine Dairy quart bottle sells for almost $700, more than the value of the entire herd of his youth.

Hampshire went to work with his brother-in-law delivering oil and working on furnaces for six months. Then another brother-in-law said he had an opening at the parts counter at Wharton and Barnard. He was there just six months. His father-in-law told him there was a opening for a water meter reader for the city.

"I was a water boy for two years. I got $40 a week and $10 for the use of my car. I thought I was doin' pretty good," he said.

"About 1950, Wade Insley, the treasurer for Salisbury who hired me, reviewed my work record and told city engineer Philip Cooper that he might be able to use me," Hampshire recalled. Cooper called Hampshire and asked if he wanted to join his department. "I asked him how much he was payin.' I think it was $3,200 a year. I took the job."

"He was a diamond in the rough," said Cooper, 97, who remembers the enthusiastic and talented Hampshire and hired him as an assistant engineer.

Cooper, who oversaw a survey team, told Hampshire the city was going to change the course of Camden Avenue and call it Riverside Drive. Hampshire was to survey the route and draw up plats of properties that would be part of the new road to run from Mill Street to College Avenue. It took him almost a year to complete, yet he was not licensed.

In 1958, Wicomico County created its own department of public works and Francis Dryden, then county engineer, asked Cooper for a man to work for him. Cooper recommended Hampshire.

"I told Mr. Dryden I wouldn't leave the city for less than $6,000. He had it approved."

Hampshire then began moonlighting on the side, doing a lot of work for fellow surveyor Gerald Schaffer. By 1965, he had acquired his surveyor's license and was working on his own from the cellar of his home, having bought the Schaffer business. "I borrowed $5,000 from the bank and hired two men."

Two years later, his wife, Martha, told him the business had to have a new home, so he moved to an office on High Street and then bought a house-office building on North Division Street in 1974, where the business remains today. Surveyor John Andrews joined the company in 1971 and Hampshire's son, Doug, came in 1972. The company is now owned by the two younger men.

"We have surveyed 10,000-plus parcels of land and thousands of subdivision lots over the years," Hampshire said. The Chestnut Hill development, north of Salisbury, was among his first major jobs. Then came Kensington Woods near Upper Ferry, Foxchase, Deer Harbor, Centennial Village and Tamarac Village," he said. "We have also surveyed farms, thousands of acres of marsh and swamp, commercial properties and even 1,600 3-by-6 burial lots."

Of course, he said, all those years were not without memorable stories.

"One day we were surveying on Jersey Road. I had a boy with me. My neighbor, who was my age, was also helping me. The boy had moved to a site to take a measurement near the line of another property owner. The man threatened him; my neighbor said he'd handle it. He went up there and told the man he was marking the property line. The two got to cussin' and pullin' the (survey) range pole back and forth. My neighbor's false teeth flew out of his mouth, landed on the ground. He picked 'em right up, shoved 'em back in his mouth and continued cussin,' " Hampshire said, laughing.

Then, too, there was the time he was stepping over an electric fence when the live wire got wedged between his hip and a sheath on his belt that held his pencils.

"He was hopping and jumping," Andrews recalled.

Hampshire still remembers the time an assistant momentarily placed the surveying equipment in the center of Old Fruitland Road. A car rounded the curve, struck the valuable tools and sent the "gun" (transit) as high as the lines on a telephone pole.

"Even worse," said Andrews, "the tripod came right smack down in the middle of her windshield."

"I felt terrible," Hampshire said, "because I had to buy new equipment, and we thought we would be sued."

The surveyor also recalls, with laughter, the time he was working off Newton Street for a lady client when her male business partner showed up and got into an argument with her.

"She pulled a fishin' rod out the back of her car and was beatin' him up as she chased him down the street," Andrews said.

Over the years Hampshire has found lines marked with pump pipes, field stones, buggy and car axles, locust poles and triple-notched 100-year-old line trees. Like his late friend and fellow surveyor Richard Cooper, Hampshire is known for his detailed work, "the old-school way," he said.

"We recently had to check a property line that Harold marked in 1964, using a 100-foot tape with a transit. His boundary stones were still there. Here we are now using electronic equipment and GPS technology, and we checked his markers and they are 100 percent, dead-on-the-money accurate," said Andrews.

Hampshire was recently honored by the Maryland Society of Surveyors for being among the oldest active surveyors in Maryland. He plans to keep on working.

Source: Del Marva Media Group