Today, I ran across another interesting distance measurement concerning our old familiar measurement of a rod measuring 16.5 feet per rod.
The deed stated, "......run thence North for 11-3/7 rods....."
I encounter these odd measurements occasionally, and I am stumped as to WHY and HOW a rod is divided into 7 parts. ???
1/7 rod is 16.5 feet divided by 7 equals 2.357 feet per each of the 7 parts. What....how.....why.....where do they get 7 parts?
In trying to decipher the old measurements, how do they come up with dividing a rod into 7 parts? The only thing that I could guess is that it may be equal to one step of about 2.375 feet per step, or 4.714 feet per pace, which is about right for a standard short pace. Therefore, one chain will be about 14 paces. Sound legit? Therefore, one half chain, or 2 rods would equal about 7 paces. One rod would equal about 3-1/2 paces. Odd way of measuring land by pacing for a legal description land record!
I am looking for a better insight on a measurement such as this. Converted, 11-3/7 rod calculates to be 188.57 feet, so here I go with my fancy measuring instruments trying to find a corner marker set at 11-3/7 rods by some method unknown as of now.
What are your thoughts as to how in the world the original measurement was done using sevenths of a rod????
Everybody has their quirks, as long as you can calculate the fraction of the whole, life is good.
I see this and often wonder if they measured in feet and converted back to rods because that's what they always used in the past.
I would try to find when the deed wording was first composed, and consider if that was before the age of pocket calculators. Back then people tended to calculate with simple fractions rather than decimal fractions. So maybe the result of some calculation ended with a simple fraction. The result was reduced to lowest terms and the denominator just happened to be 7.
But of course, even before pocket calculators were common, surveyors tended to use decimal fractions. So maybe the deed was composed a long time ago, before there was much consensus among surveyors about how to do calculations. Or maybe the deed wasn't written by a surveyor.
Steps. People who were shorter in stature, on average, than today might have found a rod to be seven steps. 28.28 inches.
My description, even if the deed used rods as a unit of measure, would always be in feet. There's no point in converting back to an unused measurement system.
I would hope that's the standard. Do surveyors still do that?! My comment was about the original survey that the description was based on.
Odd thought here but may want to consider links for the 3/7 as I have seen descriptions prepared by scriveners not familiar with reading surveyors field notes.
This was an older description, probably written back when the unit length of a rod was more common. I would say probably around the early to mid 1900’s here in Northeast Mississippi.
I had two comments from others who offered their suggestions.
1. One suggested that a half of a standard railroad gauge is 2.354 feet, which is very close to 1/7 of a rod. So, maybe they used an actual 16-1/2 foot long pole (rod) for the major length measurements, and then used another measuring device that was one half of a railroad gauge long for the incremental measurements. Or, maybe the long pole had marks in one-seventh increments.
2. Another suggested that it could have been measured with a wheel, one where it took 7 revolutions per rod. The circumference of a circle measuring 1/7 rod calculates to have a diameter of 0.75 feet, or 9 inches. I am curious to know if the use of a measuring wheel was more common back then.
In yet another older description encountered a few years ago, I had to deal with units of measurements in rods and fractions of a rod with 11 as a denominator. That one got me trying to figure out the how/why, too. If a standard Gunter’s chain was used, it had quarter marks on it for rods. And each rod had 25 links, so why didn’t they use links instead of a fraction of a rod? This leads me to think they did not use a standard chain, but maybe an actual pole, or half pole device. So, why not have marks for links instead of sevenths, or elevenths, using fractions? I try to place myself in the shoes of surveyors of old, and walk their footsteps. What did they use for distance measurements, and direction determination and use? History is indeed fascinating!
Yeah, I'm guessing it's a step; I've measured my steps at 2.2 feet but I think I step shorter than a lot of guys. If they had a chain or some other smaller unit tool available then it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't simply use that.
