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.
