The Commissioners' replacement as chief engineer and surveyor, John Randel Jr., took over the position in June 1808; the project would occupy him for most of the next 13 years. Randel had been apprenticed to De Witt, and when he became an assistant surveyor in De Witt's office, he interpreted the field reports of other surveyors to draft maps based on them of land in the Adirondack Mountains and on the Oneida Reservation, mapped the Albany Turnpike between Albany and Schenectady and the Great Western Turnpike from Albany to Cooperstown, and surveyed property lots in Albany and in Central New York, particularly Oneida County When he was hired by the commissionon De Witt's suggestion and with Morris' approvalhe was still a relatively inexperienced 20-year-old.