Muddy Deeds Cleaned Up December 9, 2009

Last winter a client asked me to survey a small ten acre woodlot that was behind his farm that was being offered to him. I visited the town hall and examined the tax maps and tax assessment records. The tax map showed an “L” shaped lot and listed it as 20 acres. I shrugged knowing that the local tax assessor was not a land surveyor and tax maps are hardly definitive sources of boundary location.

During my research I unearthed a lot of old surveys for the surrounding areas. This is generally a good thing because it means that I am headed down a well trodden trail as far as the research goes and the old survey plans will have valuable clues as to where the bounds of my client’s land is. As I pieced together these older surveys the void did indeed point toward an “L” shaped lot being some 20 to 25 acres. This was curious because the deed clearly described a rectangular lot of 10 acres.

What was even more curious was that the old surveys showed the land being owned variously by people who did not appear in the deed chain. My clients own deed to the farm which abutted the “locus” – the lot I was surveying – was particularly unhelpful being the “homestead farm” of Muddy Plow field. No metes and bounds, no mention of abutters, nothing except that.

What did old Muddy own anyway? My client took me out to the back of his farm and pointed to a stone wall that. Digging further in the deed chain found that Muddy had inherited the farm from his great grandfather Stony Plowfield and Stony’s deed described the farm as ending at the stone wall. Yet, some how, the 10 acre lot and the farm did not fit together and there were no clues as to why everyone thought that this lot was “L” shaped. Whenever I am faced with puzzling deed descriptions and uncertain deed chains, it’s time to go fishing.

By fishing I mean scanning deeds by name of owner and reading their descriptions. This sort of research is a black hole of billable hours. I should say at this point that our system of land records is extremely inefficient. Land is recorded under the owner’s name. There is not requirement that deeds actually be recorded or that deeds clearly describe the land. What is stranger is that deeds are not considered proof of ownership, merely evidence of ownership. Imagine if cars were bought, owned and sold in this manner! I informed my client before I went any further and let him know that this research was going to take a bit more time that I reckoned. He gave me the green light and I went ahead with my fishing expedition.

I started with Stony since he had the clearest description yet. He owned many parcels during his life actively buying and selling woodlots all over town. Most of these deeds read like this “North by land of Smith, West by land of Jones, South by land of Johnson, and East by land of Brown being X acres.” I drew a diagram of each one of these deeds and laid them out like a big jigsaw puzzle. And began to eliminate deeds that described lots that somehow did not fit the locus and keep the deeds that mentioned lands owned by abutters in the deed chains I knew of around the locus. A few of these deeds were tantalizing in that they mentioned Muddy as an abutter.

I looked at these deeds more closely and things began to fall into place. Apparently Muddy had bought a lot that abutted his farmstead along the stone wall. Then be bought another lot that abutted that lot to the south. Then some one else bought a 10 acre lot that abutter that last lot on the east. The three lots together formed the “L” shaped lot. Apparently, the two woodlots were forgotten by Muddy’s heirs and successors over the years thinking their property ended at the stone wall as described in Stony’s deed..

So my client ended up buying the 10 acres his 10 acres and reclaiming the two lots that had long been forgotten. It’s always nice to unravel a mystery in favor of the client.

A Tribute to a Friend’s Passing August 8, 2009

I was pleased and honored that the family of a friend of mine called to ask if I would partition the quarter acre from their farm that they needed to create a family cemetery.  A quarter acre was the minimum amount of land necessary to create a family cemetery in Maine.

My friend moved to Maine in the mid 1970s and bought, with his wife, a large spread of some of the most lovely fields and woods you can imagine.  The worked, farmed, raised children and retirement was not in his vocabulary.  While he lived an exemplary life, it is the manner of his death that I wish to tell you about in the hope that some meaning will be found in it.

He was working in his yard when he collapsed with a heart attack.  He told his wife to drive him to the hospital.  They got in the car and drove off, he asked his wife to go to the inland hospital instead of the closer one by the shore because the inland hospital had a reputation of being less expensive.  He died before they reached the hospital.

His choices reflected his concern about the cost of health care.  There were three nearby ambulance companies that might have arrived quickly and stabilized him during a trip to the hospital.  Our healthcare system is over due for a top to bottom reform.  No one should be excluded from receiving basic medical care on economic grounds alone.

Sometimes you get the bear …. July 31, 2009

He just wanted to have a pin set from an old survey done in the 1967.  The request was simple enough.  The research would be minimal and the field measurements would only need to validate what was indicated on the plan.  The plan was for an old subdivision called “Swampy Acres” and his lot was a 20 acre parcel abutting a large woodlot to the north and a stream running down the middle.

 

After he left the office I sent out my usual abutter notices and went up to the registry to begin my research.  Very quickly I found a plan that was done by another surveyor for an abutting neighbor.  This plan showed the stream to be the bound and not the line that was shown on my client’s plan.  I decided it was time to go home and have a drink.

 

The next day I called the client and told him that we would have to expand the scope of the survey to see which surveyor was correct.  I explained that this would mean a lot more research than I had originally anticipated.  After he gave me the go-ahead I set to work at the registry.

 

Tracing deed chains is both a science and an art.  It requires imagining the world as the people of the time saw it.  Place names change or are forgotten.  Land own by families generations before are still referred to in the modern deeds.  Mills and farms are not longer in existence.  Road are laid out or moved or discontinued.  The language changes and spelling becomes an art in an of itself.  An “S” is interchangeable with and “F” in the scripty looping letters of yor.

 

After quite a few days I was able to construct a chain of deed back to the 1700’s.  The call for the stream was a very ancient call and was replaced by a call for the abutting land owner a few generations after the boundary was created.  I took my time to examine every possible deed that might have changed the bound from the stream to something else but I came up with nothing.  The old surveyor who drew up my client’s plan had inconveniently left the scene.

 

When I returned to my office from the registry a man was waiting for me.  “I got you letter” he said, “and I want to tell you something.”  This case was getting curiouser and curiouser.  He explained that he owned the abutting woodlot and that there was an old discontinued road that went thru my client’s property.  He then went on to tell me that he concerned that this road is the only access to his property.

 

The field work was uneventful.  It was a beautiful area with the stream and an old cemetery with the names of the prior owners, and very helpfully how they were related.  This is always useful to know because the deeds do not tell you that the buyer is a son-in-law or that there are two or three people of the same name in different generations.

 

The stream did bisect the lot as shown on my client’s plan and worst, the discontinued road bisected the remainder.  I continued my research at the town office and eventually found that the road was indeed discontinued in the 1850’s.  The interesting thing about discontinued roads in Maine is that unless the town specifically states that the right of the public to travel over the road is also discontinued, then the right of way remains even while the old road becomes grown over as this one was.

 

I drew up the plan showing the stream as the bound and the existence of the public right-of-way thru his property and sent it on to my client.  He was gracious enough to pay me for my work even if I was not able to set the pin that he wanted me to.  “Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.”  He said.

Welcome July 17, 2009

Land Surveying.  I love it.After having a desk job for 20 years I not have a career that I can truly enjoy. 

Aside from getting me out from behind a desk, land surveying incorporates three disciplines that I are interesting.  The typical survey is a process, research, field measurements and drawing.

The research is the first part of the evidence gathering phase of the survey.  I read the deeds and the deeds of the abutting nieghbors.  I read the deeds of previous owners going back as far as I need to determine how the the boundary was created.  The central question in my mine is “What were they thinking?”

The field work is the most fun.  This is the exploration of the property, finding any monuments that are mentioned in the deeds or other evidence of ownership and use like stone walls and fences or ipies in the ground that are not mentioned in the deeds.  This phase is where I get the most physical activity draging equipment out into the field, cutting site lines and digging up buried monuments.

Finally I take the information from the deeds and the measurements I made on the ground and attempt to reconcile them in a drawing.  This is always fun and interesting.  There are always questions about how everything fits together or how things got the way it is.  But this is grist for my mill, I rarely get called when everyone knows where the bounds are.

There is a lot to land surveying and in the posts that follow I hope you will find these post enlightening and entertaining.