Finding my property line using clues from the past

[Jeff]

There was a tool casualty making this video. :'(  

Finding, defining, and reclaiming my u.p. property line using clues from the past. - YouTube

[IndiLina]

Interested in watching this later. One of my parcels was last surveyed in 1920, and hand written. Been meaning to see if I can find the rock piles mentioned in the deed as the corners. One of the corners was a black gum stump, so won't be finding that 100 years later. 

[jb616]

Mine was easy. My Son is a surveyor  8)

[mike_belben]

I was out looking for corners today.. Huntstand app is really close at laying out the boundary by GPS but it requires some service.  Out in the open its good but in the woods it drifts. 

[Ron Wenrich]

I don't know about Michigan, but in PA I wouldn't bet the ranch on a stone fence or any fence being on the property line.  This practice varies from area to area.  If you're finding fence posts in the middle of a forest, you're probably dealing with an overgrown field.

Original stone piles are nice, if you can find them.  I used to run things from really old deeds.  Even some from original warrant deeds.  I searched hard for those original piles, and found plenty.  But, with the advent of better equipment, some surveyors would establish new corners from those original deed descriptions run with a chain and a compass.  Some were close, some were off by quite a bit.  If I had a surveyor find line, I would show them whatever original corners I had and have them tie into those corners.  The landowner had the option to rewrite the deed to current technology. 

The best things to find are line flitches on trees.  I've found some that were many decades old.  The other thing is the difference in stand ages.  Most often there would be a number of years between harvests from one side to the other.  Also, different applications would give a different stand density, or composition.  Always helpful. 

For my timber sales, I always notified neighbors what we were doing and encouraged them to inspect our lines for accuracy.  I only ever had 2 problems.  One was a tree standing close to a stone wall.  The neighbor wanted to be paid for half the tree.  He said it was a line tree.  The other guy didn't know where his corners were and thought we cut some of his trees.  I showed him the corners, and later sold his timber.

[Jeff]

I have stone piles, stone fences, a 15 yr old clear cut on the neighbors, and the remnants of a fence. As I get back farther on the property it is rough to tell where you are at due to all the storm damage from a few years ago. Uprooted trees with head high pr higher root balls, snapped off trees and tree tops, and then, the ensuing brush. I know where 3 corners are. Its the 1/2 mile long lines I'm working on identifying by starting at known historical points. I've found at least one old down post still connected to the ground which still has a remnant of blue marking paint from the last time the neighboring property was logged off.

[mike_belben]

What i have done on the one pin i have found between me and my best neighbor is to use the clearing saw and a tophandle to thin all rubbish in about an 8ft wide lane that neither of us will be sore about. 

I tie a barberpole of pink flagging tape as high as i can reach on a tree that was at the pin, and another at the fence termination point and now just want a straight connector line.  My property has a 30ft or so wrinkles so there is no way to see by line of site front to back unless up in the air.  The fence might be wrong but its been there and we both just accept it as our divider,  a little strip is not worth the animosity of taking a piece of "his yard"  to me, nor do i want to lose a strip of "my yard." 

 So i just sit over that fence ontop a ladder and have the kid wave his arms around at the pin then have him walk forward and touch any tree that needs to go in order to open up a sight lane. A rifle scope is perfect for this. 

 Once i got a lane clear i stretched a pink construction string just above grade on the hills (its way over my head across the troughs)  I will use a plumb bob to put the fence posts exactly into the property line.   Then looking at the parcel dimensions it is much easier to get the other line aimed in by measuring off the defined fence line.  These are all about 200ft x 1300 foot skinny rectangle yards into dense overgrowth forest so drift is guaranteed. Ive got 3 more 1/4 mile strain runs to do this winter.  


I may have to offer a few trees to neighbors get it clear enough for a dozer row but i want to be able to mow both sides for firebreak. 

[SwampDonkey]

My back line is the international boundary line on the west, the east line is the road, the south line was surveyed 30 years ago and maintained every 3-5 years. The north line was established before the rest of the farm was sold, it's maintained to. A surveyor was around the lines 17 years ago just before the sale to get it down on paper. 99% of the landowners around here never maintain their lines at all. A mill owns a couple partials up here and they keep their lines maintained. No one else seems to care or too cheap to update them. I've had 450 acres surveyed 20 years ago for $750 bucks. Best money spend. One line was surveyed twice within 10 years because the loggers cut the line trees all down both times. The first one cut where ever he wanted and the landowner who hired him didn't give a darn where he was cutting until we caught up to him. :-\

[peakbagger]

I used to survey under a licensed surveyor for a water utility. They were too cheap to buy a total station so it was steel tape and a transit. We did a variety of surveys from old deeds to fairly recent stuff. We would find errors in distances and on occasion angles frequently on the older deeds and acreages could be way off. In some cases it was obvious that they didnt correct for slope angle. I never went to school for surveying but the surveyor insisted that evidence in the field of intent took precedence over angles and distances. In most cases these were tied to old farm deeds that may go back 100 to 200 years. We would head out in the field and locate whatever we could find and then come back to the office and plot it out by hand on a grid then overlay the deeds to see what lined up. It was fun but tedious work. The old timer I originally worked for was a big advocate of in doubt drive a visible pin where he thought a corner was and then drive a second pin down deep several inches below the top of the soil. On occasion the first pin would "walk" even though we usually had cross ties to reference points but the buried one did not. One thing I was very suspect of was barbed wire. Sure it could be on a line but just as often it was plus or minus 30 feet. If we picked up enough of it it usually averaged out but we always hoped we could find something more solid like a pin or pile of rocks at a corner.

Ultimately on these older surveys, it comes down to the professional opinion of the surveyor, if there was dispute the surveyors for both sides would lay out their case and the judge would rule. Generally if it was just trees and raw land a good surveyor would recommend both parties walk out in the woods and pick an agree upon line. On my houses 1.3 acre lot, the adjoining property owner decided to remark the boundaries himself to save a buck (illegal in my state) prior to selling it to the current owner. He went from the wrong pin despite there being the remains of the original blaze line. The guy who bought it thinks I own more land than I do in a pie shaped piece. It is to my advantage so I havent pointed it out as it gives me some breathing room from anything getting built in the side setback. On the other hand my wood lot has the neighbors driveway cutting across one corner. Its been that way for possibly 100 years so I can not do much due to adverse possession laws. Its within the side setback so I can not do anything with it anyhow. Someday when he or I sell it may come up. I make sure to repaint any blazes along both lines every 3 or 4 years so there is no confusion.  

While going through the fieldbooks with the utility I saw reference to balloon surveys. I asked around and the old timer confirmed the method was done before he worked there. As a utility we had lots of long cross country pipelines laid out when it was rural land. The area was wooded and frequently we may be on a several thousand foot straight line. We might find a corner point but we were supposed to clear the centerline and apparently they did to. So they would pick a calm day, go to the next angle point and raise a balloon on a string above the trees and hope the guy with the transit could see from the prior angle point. The surveyor would then rotate the scope down to ground level and they would start clearing on the line until they hit the angle point, then set up again. On later deeds they cheated, the utility would obtain a right of way either by deed or condemnation then they would survey it. Once the pipe went in,  the right of way became 75 foot centered along the center of the actual pipe. So once the pipe was in the ground we would just go out with a pipe detector,  locate the pipe and pull 37.5 feet off to either side. Many landowners did not understand this and would try to establish the boundary off the original survey. In a couple of cases they ended up having to move a house or garage when they got to close as the pipe was not centered in the original described right of way usually on corners where the pipe was deflected in long radius rather than installing an elbow.  

[clearcut]

My favorite corner:

"Follow the crest of the watershed northerly, to where an Oak Tree one stood."

Taken off a deed, handwritten in 1848. Parcel was owned by a town.

Right about where that corner should have been, and where it tied in well with a stonewall, was a noticeable depression where the 1848 stump rotted. 

[Ron Wenrich]

I heard of these, but never read them:

Go to stick in the ice.

Go to man in the field. 

[mike_belben]

I thought moving a fence would make enemies but moving a house.. Thats some gall.

[newoodguy78]

I've got a brother that's a licensed surveyor. I've heard him say several times some of the most accurate deeds he's surveyed are the oldest ones he's worked. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the people that originally did them. Mind boggling to think about when coming from someone that will only use the latest ,greatest technologies and a pencil with a needle point on it.

[Don P]

The best one I've heard from a surveyor;
"Go one and one half cigars N on horseback".

[thecfarm]

My Father did our lines many years ago. I "helped" when I was about 12 years old. One piece is about a mile back in the woods. Someone had their land surveyed. Looks like we was about 40 feet off. We gained about 40 feet. I betcha if we would of been off 40 in their favor there would of been a knock on our door.  ;) But not bad, all we had was a long rope, forgot how long,250 feet?? and common sense enough to read a deed.

[SwampDonkey]

I've seen a couple properties over the years where it looked like the line was started from opposing corners. Out in the middle they ended and was 30 feet off from one another at one property and around 10 feet off on another and two different color paints. Tell tail signs of not legally surveyed, but Joe land owner survey. :D I've seen mill property change lines lots of times when buying up land, and they have a surveyor hired full time. One new line near here, I see it 40 feet out in the neighbor's field.

[HemlockKing]

Helps when you got boulders the size of small pickups running right along your line, ain't losing that line lol might go chisel some stuff in those stones 

[thecfarm]

But at least Joe was close.  ;)
I can remember the realtors stopping into to my fathers house because they could not find the lines. I think my grandparents owned 1000 acres at one time here. I guess land was being sold and no one knew where the lines was.    : So they would stop in at our house and my Father would take them for a walk through the woods.  ;D  Have to remember this was old farm land. A stone wall is a stone wall.

[SwampDonkey]

Depends on what close enough is, 40 feet on me and my wood cut off isn't close enough. But 40 feet on land no one ever touches, maybe for some, but not this someone. :D Was usually cedar rail fence up here on the lines. The stones was dumped at field edges bordering on wetland or piles throughout the fields on patches of ledge. My great grandfather had enough rocks off the field to build a bridge across a gully. There was a row of rocks in the field below the house, but wasn't a line there. The lines running that direction was the border on one side and the road on the other. That line of rocks wasn't even half way the distance between the actual lines. ;)

[Ron Wenrich]

I had some properties that didn't close by deed.  I used to piece the adjoining deeds together to make sure that there weren't overlaps.  I've seen some deeds that aren't very good.  Lines can be omitted, bearings could be off, distances could be off.  I've also found that even adjoining a surveyed govt property is no guarantee that they tied into the original corners.  Time spent in the Recorder of Deeds office often means less time in the field.

[stavebuyer]

Most times when property transfers the legal description is copied from the old deed to the new. In addition to old metes and bounds descriptions including things likely to change like the course of a stream or the existence or size of a tree, the potential for omissions, corruptions, and transposition of deed calls keeps things interesting as does the existence of fences that were treated as the line.  More than a few shady characters have used the confusion to blatantly steal timber from absentee owners.

[mike_belben]

I have a full size photocopy of the original hand drawn surveyors plat for the entire subdivision with every line length on it.  But with pins gone missing and no blazes, its still a tricky thing to define.