Working in Williamston NC Thursday in front of an old house. Owner came out and while talking with him he said he had the original land grant. Invited me in and sure enough he had the grant from 1742 for 300 acres! Land has not left the family for 275 years. A little hard to read but I made out all the calls.
Hack, post: 445831, member: 708 wrote: Howard
If your interested there a good book by E.Kay Kirkham published by the Everton Press. It's called "The Handwriting of American Records for a Period of 300 Years".
While that would benefit many on the east coast, I find that in Washington & Oregon, the handwriting styles didn't change much from about 1850 on. As in the example of the Ipwich deed above, the style is older than what I have seen on original documents found here, and rightly so. The only real problems I have seen it a county or town Scribner being hired because they could write, not necessary spell correctly. I did have the lost art of phonetics taught in grade school, and my in-laws came from The Netherlands so write words they way they sound (price-pryse) which helps. Now it they would have just stopped dipping the pen in the inkwell so much that large blobs don't appear on the document.
I was on a bike trip in Europe along with a Frenchman. He said for many years there Scribner's got paid by the word so wealthy clients had deeds many pages long and common folk had short, clear and concise documents. Has anyone found this out in colonial states with meets and bounds deeds?
Howard Surveyor, post: 446289, member: 8835 wrote: While that would benefit many on the east coast, I find that in Washington & Oregon, the handwriting styles didn't change much from about 1850 on. As in the example of the Ipwich deed above, the style is older than what I have seen on original documents found here, and rightly so. The only real problems I have seen it a county or town Scribner being hired because they could write, not necessary spell correctly. I did have the lost art of phonetics taught in grade school, and my in-laws came from The Netherlands so write words they way they sound (price-pryse) which helps. Now it they would have just stopped dipping the pen in the inkwell so much that large blobs don't appear on the document.
I was on a bike trip in Europe along with a Frenchman. He said for many years there Scribner's got paid by the word so wealthy clients had deeds many pages long and common folk had short, clear and concise documents. Has anyone found this out in colonial states with meets and bounds deeds?
Here in New England old deeds are filled with abbreviations. I'm told that the reason is simply material costs. Both paper and ink.
Howard Surveyor, post: 446289, member: 8835 wrote: While that would benefit many on the east coast, I find that in Washington & Oregon, the handwriting styles didn't change much from about 1850 on. As in the example of the Ipwich deed above, the style is older than what I have seen on original documents found here, and rightly so. The only real problems I have seen it a county or town Scribner being hired because they could write, not necessary spell correctly. I did have the lost art of phonetics taught in grade school, and my in-laws came from The Netherlands so write words they way they sound (price-pryse) which helps. Now it they would have just stopped dipping the pen in the inkwell so much that large blobs don't appear on the document.
I was on a bike trip in Europe along with a Frenchman. He said for many years there Scribner's got paid by the word so wealthy clients had deeds many pages long and common folk had short, clear and concise documents. Has anyone found this out in colonial states with meets and bounds deeds?
Not necessarily seen longer deeds for the heck of it, although transactions between so and so, Esquire the documents can get long on pomp and short on circumstance...
That said, scrivners here were paid by the word and the is a distinct drop off in the quality and length of descriptions after the Civil War. Deeds that previously read like a modern deed with metes and bounds and with math that almost closes, suddenly change to the proverbial by the land of x north, the land of y to the east, the land of z to the south, and west by the road.
Land values in NE plumeted as soldiers from NE saw better and cheaper land out west during the war. At least in my area, with land on the ocean being the exception, land values have only got back to the point where people care enough how the land is described to pay money to make it happen, is in the last 30 years or so. When I do research on a tract that I know predates the War, I know it will be the first or second conveyance that will contain a real description to follow, often clearly based on some kind of on the ground measurements.
Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
Paul D, post: 446379, member: 323 wrote: Not necessarily seen longer deeds for the heck of it, although transactions between so and so, Esquire the documents can get long on pomp and short on circumstance...
That said, scrivners here were paid by the word and the is a distinct drop off in the quality and length of descriptions after the Civil War. Deeds that previously read like a modern deed with metes and bounds and with math that almost closes, suddenly change to the proverbial by the land of x north, the land of y to the east, the land of z to the south, and west by the road.
Land values in NE plumeted as soldiers from NE saw better and cheaper land out west during the war. At least in my area, with land on the ocean being the exception, land values have only got back to the point where people care enough how the land is described to pay money to make it happen, is in the last 30 years or so. When I do research on a tract that I know predates the War, I know it will be the first or second conveyance that will contain a real description to follow, often clearly based on some kind of on the ground measurements.
Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
Paul I'm sure since you are in NH you are a disciple of the "Don" as am I. Hence you are getting back to the first description regardless. Seriously, I agree 100 % the pre-War descriptions usual are metes and bounds and are the place to start.
Another interesting item in our area is that the courthouse burned down around 1893 so all the public records were destroyed. The County rebuild the "public record" with copies from title companies and land owners bringing in documents to be copied again (read hand cramps). I had a deed that stated "beginning at a point about 2 chains westerly from the Northwest corner of Lot 8 in the Plat of ....". I started going back through the deeds and found out the larger parcel was owned by a GLO surveyor and it originally started out with "Beginning at a 14"x8"x6" trap stone with the following accessories (4 bearing trees with distance and bearings listed) about 2 chains Westerly of the NW corner of Lot 8, Block 3 in the Plat of.....". Every corner he set called for a stone with accessories but hadn't been copied onto any deeds after the first one.
Nobody ever looked for the stone (similar to the Hatfield & McCoy post), just tried to figure out where the NW corner of Lot 8 was to start. No occupation lines, and no less than 3 solutions for the perimeter of the Plat named in the deeds. Where is the Ouija board when you need one? If I could find the original surveyors boot, I could have someone witch for his footsteps I guess.
