Property corner markers

[dodge man]

There is something known as chain of title. If all the sudden you change the deed to something else, where did the new description come from? Does it match the old description? The best way is a modern survey done, have it recorded, then it’s up to date and ties it into the original description.

 

[Jstpssng]

I have been on a multi-year hunt now with no success...

It is pretty remote here, with about 17,000 acres of non-developed land in front of my house, and some 7000 acres behind it. So it is pretty isolated. But on my Grandmother's death bed she told me about some relatives that were buried along the town line, on the Foster Road. Well that is all well and good, but there is no cemetery on the Foster Road along the town line, but on the next road up, about a mile away, there is a cemetery on the townline, but she insisted it was on the Foster Road.

So I went looking, about this time of year when the snow is off the ground, and when the leaves are off the trees. I followed the town line, but found nothing, so I thought in her sickness, she was wrong.

Then I talked to a surveyor. He said she was NOT crazy. He was surveying and found the (3) headstones, but "he could never get there again."

So I talked to my neighbors, and she said her husband was hunting, got lost, and came across the (3) headstones, "but could never find his way back."

I have looked for the past 12 years, and I cannot find them. I even used Superficial Maps since they highlight gravel deposits, and old cemeteries were always in gravel banks because the digging was easy, and depth to bedrock was deep enough for burial. The soil is pretty thin up there, so the gravel is limited, but none of those locations had headstones.

So the hunt is still on...

I heard a story...
Of somebody who was out hunting about 20 years ago off Rte 2A, AKA the Military road (Or the Haynesville Woods) and came across a pile of old iron under the overhang of a big rock. He took a piece to the gun shop in Lincoln, where the owner identified it as the remains of an old rifle. The gunshop owner told me the story, saying that he believed it was a cache of weapons from the Aroostook War, when Maine marched on Canada. He also stated that the hunter never was able to find his way back...
I had a pretty good idea where he was, and a woodcutter who we had working there told of seeing old rock walls in an area where he was working. Yet I"ve been looking for years and can't find either the rock walls or the outcropping. Rather than the Aroostook War, I suspect they were left by the British during the War of 1812. It's interesting the things we find out in the woods, and you would be surprised at how many people have gone into them over the years, never to be seen again.

Getting back on topic; I would be very hesitant to buy a piece of land without a proper survey done.
My 20 acres here has a fence running up the south line, a rock wall on the edge of my field on the west line, which my neighbor and I agree is the line, town road to the north and pins from the abutter on the east. Yet if that surveyor was still alive I would have him set pins on my other two corners. There's enough slop between the deeds and what's actually here that my field could actually belong to my neighbor.
I just bought a 2 1/2 acre house lot because the price was right, but I never would have considered it except that it has 4 capped IPs from a retired surveyor I trust.
After 40 years of finding old lines, I like to think that I know a little bit about what I"m doing; yet if in doubt we hire a surveyor. I may provide him with a map showing GPS points of what I feel is evidence; yet expect him to do his own work and not trust what I have done. As I say; If I want a half-a## job I can do that myself.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

There is something known as chain of title. If all the sudden you change the deed to something else, where did the new description come from? Does it match the old description? The best way is a modern survey done, have it recorded, then it’s up to date and ties it into the original description.

:thumbsup: All three of my property's have been professionally surveyed and filed at the courthouse. Just as good as chiseled in stone. Not cheap, but worth it.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Getting back on topic; I would be very hesitant to buy a piece of land without a proper survey done.
My 20 acres here has a fence running up the south line, a rock wall on the edge of my field on the west line, which my neighbor and I agree is the line, town road to the north and pins from the abutter on the east. Yet if that surveyor was still alive I would have him set pins on my other two corners. There's enough slop between the deeds and what's actually here that my field could actually belong to my neighbor.
I just bought a 2 1/2 acre house lot because the price was right, but I never would have considered it except that it has 4 capped IPs from a retired surveyor I trust.
After 40 years of finding old lines, I like to think that I know a little bit about what I"m doing; yet if in doubt we hire a surveyor. I may provide him with a map showing GPS points of what I feel is evidence; yet expect him to do his own work and not trust what I have done. As I say; If I want a half-a## job I can do that myself.

That is the best advice going. Before we bought our property here in VA I called a surveyor that one of the neighbors said knew the the property well. He was a treasure trove of info and based on my conversation with him we purchased the property and promptly had him survey it and file it. Money well spent.

 

[Diggin It]

I just can't imagine using trees as 'permanent' markers at a time when people were cutting them to build houses, barns, towns, railroads, boardwalks, etc., not to mention using them for firewood. Add in storms, bugs, diseases ...

Maybe they didn't expect society to last very long?

 

[MikePA]

I just can't imagine using trees as 'permanent' markers at a time when people were cutting them to build houses, barns, towns, railroads, boardwalks, etc., not to mention using them for firewood. Add in storms, bugs, diseases ...

Give the property owner some credit for intelligence. They would not cut down their own tree which was being used as a property marker. If the tree was substantial enough to use as a property marker, the stump that remained would be, too.

Also, with parcels being hundreds or thousands of acres, being off a foot or so as the tree grew probably was not a big deal. Either that, or the surveyor had a cheap land owner telling him he's was spending too much time and he wasn't paying for it.

Maybe they didn't expect society to last very long?

No, they expected that if a more accurate survey was needed, it would be done.

 

[BrokenTrack]

The problem with Chain of Custody, and Deeds filed at the County Courthouse, is that they are based upon the idea that the information they contain is correct, and this is not always the case. All my deeds are warrantee deeds, not quit claim deeds, and when I buy land, I do go back 100 years on the title search. Still, it does not catch all the mistakes. Sometimes information is just not carried forward.

In my situation where my neighbor sold my land, which is just a few acres luckily, the land was won in some lawsuit, in the mid-1800's. The land went from a landowner in one town, to the abutting landowner in another town. No big deal, and for each change of ownership, the deeds conveyed the extra land in the opposing town.

Then it was left off mistakenly, and this happens quite often...

I keep saying that "my neighbor sold my land", but that is not really the case. I have always owned it, and still do, it is just that the person that buys it thinks those acres belong to him. They don't, my neighbor never had the land to sell. So it will be redacted.

But surveying is a real issue in 2020. In Maine anyway, there are not enough surveyors anyway, and they charge entirely too much. I had just ONE line surveyed, and it cost $600...and they never surveyed it right, nor all the way to the pins. But I own hundreds of acres of land, in (5) towns, and (2) states...there is NO WAY I could afford to have it surveyed. So you rely on the surveys that were done from years past...

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^^
You are assuming that there was a survey done at some point... that's not always the case. I don't know how they can survey a portion of a line... that's like doing an engine job and only checking tolerances on one of the cylinders.

 

[oosik]

Chain of Title - along with the verbal legal description, I also have the official government document transferring title to the original owner. My dad bought the land from the original owner. The chain was pretty short. The legal description is pretty wordy.

 

[MikePA]

I had just ONE line surveyed, and it cost $600...and they never surveyed it right, nor all the way to the pins.

Sounds like they did not fulfill your agreement with them. While hindsight is always 20/20, I would not have paid them.