Question: One of the proposers of the first railroad built in the state of New York surveyed portions of what land for the US government?
Context: The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A) whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North Americanrailroads, and among the first common carrier transportation companies whose prospectus marketed an enterprise aimed (with a priority or principally) at carrying passengers fast and competing with stagecoaches between New York Harbor and Philadelphia-Trenton.  Among the other earliest chartered or incorporated railroads, only the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were chartered with passenger services in mind.  Later after mergers as the UNJ&CC became a subsidiary part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) system in New Jersey by the later merger and acquisition of several predecessor companies in 1872; which purchases also included the PRR's main line to New York City ("now Amtrak's Northeast Corridor").  Prior to 1872, its main lines were the (C&A, below), the first railroad in New Jersey and one of the first railroad in the United States. The Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad was a railroad chartered to run from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Council Bluffs, Iowa on the Missouri River.  It was the first railroad to reach Council Bluffs, Iowa, the eastern terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad.  The city of Ames, Iowa was created as a station stop on the line.  It was one of four railroads that were built as result of the Iowa Land Bill of 1856 that gave land grants for railroads. Bejucal is a municipality and town in the Mayabeque Province of Cuba.  It was founded in 1874.  It is well known as the terminal station of the first railroad built in Cuba and Latin America in 1831.  It also hosts one of the most popular and traditional carnival fest in Cuba: "Charangas de Bejucal". Haphazard is a historic house located on Pleasant Valley Road in Owensboro, Kentucky.  The house overlooks the Ohio River, and its name is probably derived from the river's eddies.  The property which Haphazard was built on was originally owned by George Mason, a signatory to the U.S. Constitution, who was given the land in a grant surveyed in 1787.  Mason's grandson Richard sold the property to Robert Triplett in 1822, by which point the log house forming the central portion of the home had been built.  Triplett likely added the house's side wings, northern gable, and Federal style interior.  Triplett accomplished many local firsts, as he was Owensboro's first large real estate dealer; Daviess County's first soil conservationist, barge operator, and author; the first distiller on the Ohio River in the county; and the builder of Kentucky's first railroad.  In 1843, A. B. Barret purchased the house from Triplett; Barret then sold the house to William Bell the following year.  Bell, the president of a local bank, likely added the house's Greek Revival portico. The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,912 mi continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.  The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants.  Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds.  The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 132 mi of track from Oakland/Alameda to Sacramento, California.  The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed 690 mi eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory (U.T.).  The Union Pacific built 1085 mi from the road's eastern terminus at Council Bluffs near Omaha, Nebraska westward to Promontory Summit. The Mohawk & Hudson Railroad was the first railroad built in the State of New York and one of the first railroads in the United States.  It was so-named because it linked the Mohawk River at Schenectady with the Hudson River at Albany.  It was conceived as a means of allowing Erie Canal passengers to quickly bypass the circuitous Cohoes Falls via steam powered trains. Harriman Station, formerly known as Turner Station until 1910, was the first station on the Erie Railroad Main Line west of Newburgh Junction tower in Harriman, New York.  Built on the side of Grove Street in Harriman, the station depot was constructed originally as Turner Station in 1838, as a three story hotel-train station combination.  This station caught fire in 1873 and was replaced by a one-story wooden structure.  That structure survived as long as its predecessor before it began decaying and was replaced in 1911 with a new station on land donated by the widow of Edward Henry Harriman.  A new one-story structure was built on the land.  The station was maintained as a one-story depot with a large monument to the side dedicated to the work of Charles Minot.  Minot was a director of the Erie Railroad who, in 1851, while his train was stopped at Turner, made the first railroad call by telegraph. George William Featherstonhaugh FRS (London, 9 April 1780 – Le Havre, 28 September 1866) was a British-American geologist and geographer.  He was one of the proposers of the Albany and Schenectady Railroad and was the first geologist to the US government.  He surveyed portions of the Louisiana Purchase for the US Government. Easton and Amboy Railroad was a railroad built across central New Jersey by the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LVRR) in the 1870s.  The line was built to connect the Lehigh Valley Railroad coal hauling operations in Pennsylvania and the Port of New York and New Jersey to serve consumer markets in New York metropolitan area.  Until it was built, the terminus of the LVRR had been at Phillipsburg, New Jersey on the Delaware River opposite Easton, Pennsylvania.  It is now part of Norfolk Southern Railway operations, partially the Lehigh Line A predecessor to the Class I Delaware and Hudson Railway, the 1820s-built Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Gravity Railroad "('D&H Gravity Railroad')" was a historic gravity railroad incorporated and chartered in 1826 with land grant rights in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania as a humble subsidiary of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and it proved to contain the first trackage of the "later organized Delaware and Hudson Railroad" (so eventually became a first class Class I Railroad).  It began as the second long U.S. gravity railroad built initially to haul coal to canal boats, was the second railway chartered in the United States after the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road before even, the Baltimore and Ohio (e. 1827).  As a long gravity railway, only the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad (e. 1827) pre-dated its beginning of operations.
Answer: the Louisiana Purchase