Intent of the Parties to the Survey

Fell into a dandy situation that revolves around the year 1936 and a family situation. This is a case of two members of the same family, both being single at the time, quit claiming a fraction of their respective interests in the parent tract to the other family member. Maybe brother and sister, not sure. The parent tract is the West Half of the Northeast Quarter of the section.

Step One: On March 25, 1936, he quit claims to her a tract described as beginning at the northeast corner of the parent tract, thence south so many rods, thence west so many rods, thence north the same distance to the north section line, thence east the same distance to beginning. A nice parallelogram following the aliquot lines. On the same day she quit claims the remainder of the parent tract to him, being the original description less the tract described above.

Step Two: (Damm the surveyors, full speed ahead) A survey is conducted on May 2, 1936 with both family members present, as well as the adjoiners to the east. The surveyors are directed to make the east line the existing fence line and the west line to agree with the existing fence there. The north-south distance is to agree with the deed. The surveyors are the County Engineer and County Surveyor. The document everything in Survey Book D in their office and include a nice narrative explaining how all parties were content with the results despite them not being in agreement with the words in the deed.

Step Three: Today, I show up to survey the parallelogram as carried forward in the deeds through the years. A descendant of the same family is finally selling it to someone outside of the family. The remainder parcel was sold over 20 years ago to a different party. I explain to the buyers, who are paying for the survey, all of the difficulties of doing the survey, including breaking down the section if there is no prior survey work. Go to the courthouse after doing some preliminary checking for signals at the potential section corner locations. Near the end of hour three in the courthouse I finally get to Survey Book D, which is the absolute last source of information left to search there. BAMM! I find the 1936 survey and the narrative.

Step Four: We will go to the scene of the crime and search for the large sandstones set in 1936 to monument the corners of the tract surveyed. Sure would be nice to have a "stone detector" that didn't involved manual labor. Of course, we will also locate the two vital section corners on the north section line to tie anything found to it.

Step Five: Document, document, document (that's a verb) everything like crazy so as to calm the title company and lender when we end up explaining how intent of the parties trumps simple little words on paper.

EDIT!

Forget to mention the really important part of the story. The 1936 survey reported the northeast corner of the tract surveyed to have been set 42.5 feet west of the calculated northeast corner of the West Half of the Northeast Quarter as spelled out in all deeds from 1936 to date. Who knows how the east line of the tract compares to the true quarter-quarter section line as it heads to the southeast corner of the tract, maybe more, maybe less. 100 rods is a fair distance to measure to the south.

To add injury to insult, the fellow cash renting this tract is really upset he did not get to buy it. Now we will be driving through his soybeans about three feet high to do our work. Better put on my armored T-shirt.