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.

 

[Jstpssng]

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...

Your neighbor's issue is with the title company, not a surveyor. Although it would probably take the latter to straighten it out... as I said before though, I don't know how they can survey "one line."

 

[MikePA]

Your neighbor's issue is with the title company, not a surveyor. Although it would probably take the latter to straighten it out... as I said before though, I don't know how they can survey "one line."

Maybe it is semantics, but it was not unusual for one owner in a dispute to ask us to survey just the line being argued over. This often required us to survey other lines on the parcel, but they only wanted us to mark the line in question.

 

[Jstpssng]

Maybe it is semantics, but it was not unusual for one owner in a dispute to ask us to survey just the line being argued over. This often required us to survey other lines on the parcel, but they only wanted us to mark the line in question.

Gotcha. Yet you still surveyed the other lines to determine where that in question was supposed to be.
After I posted my previous comment I realized that we had a surveyor do exactly that; he walked the nonexistent line, found evidence which we hadn't; and flagged where he felt the line probably was, based on the deed and evidence. We then contacted the abutter, who agreed that it was probably correct. The surveyor made it clear though that it was not a survey; the tract was several thousand acres consisting of previously smaller parcels which had been combined decades ago; each description referenced the tract next to it, and none of them gave any real distances. Just reading the darned deed would make my eyes start to cross.

Thankfully the landowner sold that tract.

 

[fried1765]

Your neighbor's issue is with the title company, not a surveyor. Although it would probably take the latter to straighten it out... as I said before though, I don't know how they can survey "one line."

Absolutely "one line" can be "surveyed", if there is reliable existing data on the ground to accurately reproduce that line.
If it is to define an entire parcel it would be necessary to run a complete traverse.

 

[aczlan]

Absolutely "one line" can be "surveyed", if there is reliable existing data on the ground to accurately reproduce that line.
If it is to define an entire parcel it would be necessary to run a complete traverse.

And hopefully have a close within an acceptable margin.

Aaron Z

 

[clemsonfor]

My lot is what used to be two, that at one time were both owned by one that was split into many.

Simplified, one family owned hundreds of acres. They split it up, sold some, kept some, then sold more to other people. There are now at least three of us with multi-acre parcels. I bought one parcel from a second owner 22 years ago, then another parcel from the original owner about 15 years ago. The deeds use terms like 'meanders along a line approximately ...' and while they've been combined into one tax bill, they've never been formally 'merged'. My lots border a county road and much of the original family property is on both sides of it. To my knowledge there are no corner markers and probably never were. There are wire fences on metal T-post and wooden posts along three sides of my irregular shaped property and then the road.

When I was thinking of buying another parcel that would have had to have been split off a larger parcel, the surveyor estimated a minimum of $1,200 but wouldn't give me a high end limit ... 'we'll just have to see how long it takes ...'. That section was heavily overgrown and it was not possible to see from corner to corner let along walk or run a surveyor chain.

The whole process needs to be dramatically simplified nationwide. With technology, I see no reason why everything isn't done by GPS coordinates, with deeds simply referencing those digital points. Trees die and decay, rocks and pins get moved. Consumer level devices are accurate to within 10' usually and higher resolution equipment is available for legal description use.

Pins? Pins? We don' need no steenking pins!!!!

Because some of us own property that hasn't been surveyed in over 100 years. And GPS coordinates don't exactly exist it talks about feet to the next point in a certain direction.

 

[clemsonfor]

I am astonished at the accuracy of surveys from a hundred or more years ago in the forested areas with hills and lakes. Our property was described in "chains" which were very close to 66' in length. But property lines are not respective of hills so there must have been some rather serious calculations that took place in conjunction with the chains.

In my 40 acres of pasture it is flat, no problems with chains but then it goes up a hillside that is about the same acreage, that was covered by 5-6' diameter fir trees, how did they calculate the hillsides using a chain that could not go through a tree but must go around two or three.

I thoroughly get why property markers are moved as technology changes. I assume all property lines are based upon a theoretical 0' elevation so a property that is at 8000' elevation might in fact be slightly larger than if it were at sea level if we assume a starting point that is at the center of the earth.

I am no surveyor and have to the best of my memory never stayed in a Holiday Inn.

I'm a Forester, we meayusr distance and our cruise distances in chains.

 

[BrokenTrack]

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

I was pretty upset with them. Obviously a boundary line has two sides: the neighbor, and yours, so to me, when I am paying for the survey, I would expect all the research to be done on my land to determine where the line was. Instead, the surveyor did it for the neighbor. As I explained to him, what do I care about all the history of THEIR land, if I am paying, and all this research needs to be done...and I understand it needs to be done...I want my money to tell the history of my land.

As for being incomplete, the line had two phases. Going from the road to a point, and then turning slightly, and going to another point. So three points. The first leg of the line was in heavy forest, then through a bog. Since the skidders were not in that area, the surveyor never ran the line there as "the going was tough."

As I said, I was pretty upset, and should not of paid.

(Incidentally, this was former Federal Land, owned by them from 1932-1945 for its gravel content for the CCC program. We bought it back in 1946, and so the area is well surveyed by the US Geological Survey, with pipes driven on the corners, with arrows, and stamps. Rock walls, and barb wire fences further determine where it is at, by my hateful neighbor was causing problems, so I had it surveyed.)

 

[BrokenTrack]

Your neighbor's issue is with the title company, not a surveyor. Although it would probably take the latter to straighten it out... as I said before though, I don't know how they can survey "one line."

I would have to research it myself. I am not sure when the plot of land taken by lawsuit was left off the next deed.

Our deeds are a mess because we were granted the land we have here, in 1746 when my Great Grandfather died in the Louisburg Siege. For his heroics, we were given the land by the King of England. Not that we were loyal, we switched sides in the American Revolution, and thus were allowed to keep what we had. Because of that, when the surveying was done was a long, long, long time ago, or about 9 generations of transfers.

But I know the information is there, because on this one spot, a local surveyor notified me that my land had been sold. He was not the one that did the surveying though, he was just doing other research and saw what happened, and being a small town, informed me. I would not have even known had he not said anything.

But that leads to another point: with land disputes, nothing is a problem, until it becomes a problem. The out of stater that thinks he owns my land is not a bad guy, nor has he done anything horrible. If I was to cut the wood, then he would get all up in arms as he thinks he owned the land, and would be upset. But I would be upset if he cut the wood. I have known about this piece of land for a long time, and never did anything about it, so now before it becomes a bigger issue, I must do something about it. Its only a few acres 4-5 acres I think, so not really worth fighting over, except it has some nice geology. I would like to keep it for that reason.

I have nothing but respect for surveyors (and foresters too), it is just that I cannot afford to survey all the lots, and the acreage that I own. Even the surveyor that screwed me over with poor surveying was probably an alright guy. I know he died a year or two later, so maybe he was not feeling good when he did the survey, and hoped to do just the minimum?

 

[RandyT]

Now throw in the fact that the length of the US survey foot changes to match the length of the international foot Jan 1 2023. I wonder how that will effect new surveys and trying to incorporate the previous shorter foot into the mix.