Junior Pin on senior line - Colonial Style

yup, that's the way it is, amazing how often it is ignored.
Jim

> Since my eyes glaze over every time I see the word: SECTION, or QUARTER CORNER, etc; I thought I'd give my brush-ape opinion of the situation in colonial state surveying...
>

Wait, Wait, WAIT!! You mean you don't use THE MANUAL in NH? What a bunch of Neanderthals you guys must be....;-)

True, the line cannot be bent in theory, but here is an example of how it happens.

Lets say you've got a senior line and a tract that butts up to it was divided many, many years ago to create a junior corner. Now, lets say in the course of the survey, you find a nice rebar with a brass cap at each end of your senior line as called for in the deed. You also find a rock on that junior corner that is called for in those deeds going back 100 years. The rock does not fall on line between the rebars. It's within a yard or so, but it isn't on line.

What do you do? Reject the rock? Here's the conundrum with that. You have no idea if the rebars locate the line better than the rock. Reject the rebars and hold the rock? There is no reason at all to reject them besides math. Here's what you do. YOU BEND THE STINKING LINE.

It doesn't really matter if you're from a colonial state or working in the PLSS; the rules are the same when it comes to accepting monuments set by earlier surveys. They don't all control, but the answer of whether they control or not has nothing to do with the correctness (precision) of their position.

Face it. There isn't a single surveyor who can set a jr monument precisely on a sr line. They might get it close enough that some measurement expert might "accept" it as "close enough," but there will always be some "expert" who will come along and place a tack on the cap at the "right" position.

Mathematics has nothing to do with whether or not a monument marks a corner. "Straight" or "curved" lines don't either. We need to learn how to gather and discern the evidence that really matters and stop being so anal about measurements.

JBS

> Lets say you've got a senior line and a tract that butts up to it was divided many, many years ago to create a junior corner. Now, lets say in the course of the survey, you find a nice rebar with a brass cap at each end of your senior line as called for in the deed. You also find a rock on that junior corner that is called for in those deeds going back 100 years. The rock does not fall on line between the rebars. It's within a yard or so, but it isn't on line.
>
> What do you do?

First, you might attempt to ascertain why the new rebars/caps are where they are. Who set them? What was the evidence used to set them? You might need to verify for yourself that the pins actually are marking the senior line.

This alleged "problem" is not uncommon for us Colonial surveyors.... One very obvious instance is our rock walls. It was/is common to locate portions of the rock wall by station and offset, or now by direct shots on the wall with the EDM.

So you are out one day, re-surveying a tract that is registered land (Land Court) and the plan shows a stone wall as the boundary. Of course there are bearings and dimensions on that wall corresponding to the location on the original survey, lets say from 1930 or so.

You've computed a subdivision of the parcel based on the plan and then you go out and find that the wall bows one way or another, and isn't actually a straight shot between the Drill Holes shown on the plan.

You re-locate the wall, a little more accurately than previously done (land is much more expensive now, and zoning requires minimum lots sizes and you are squeezing this property for as much as it's worth) and re-compute the plan and submit it to the land court for approval.

The Court has a little "hissy fit" (in the "old days) because now the math is different and the Court now requires that a judge review the plan and determine whether or not changes are substantial enough to require abutters notifications.

You can only imagine the difficulty IF you prepare a plan showing the wall bulging out from your property when the original plan shows it straight, and now you are "over" the previously computed line. But the property line remains the wall...

The Chief engineer told me that he has dwelt with cases where the walls meandered up to 30' from the computed straight line. If you had to deal with the briers that we have hear you could understand the reluctance of the original surveyor to locate every bend or break. They would locate each end, compute a line because after all "THE STONE WALL IS THE PROPERTY LINE!!!"

Later surveyors don't MOVE the line, they simply define it more accurately.

"We need to learn how to gather and discern the evidence that really matters and stop being so anal about measurements.
>
> JBS"

Well said John....

Don Poole

Don,
A few years ago Paul Gay wrote an article in POB on the Land Court, and described a situation like the one you describe, in the case he cited, the Court held that the straight line held because the wall was not specifically called for in the Certificate of Title

After consultation with the Land Court, the surveyor was advised that the dimensions as shown on the Land Court plan were inviolate and must be held as the boundaries defining the perimeter of the registered land. However, where it was clear that the boundaries of the registered parcel did not comport with actual ownership, the wall center line should control the extent of ownership. The end result was that the owner of the registered parcel owned some of his land as registered land and some of it as unregistered land. Where the stone wall deviated from the registered boundary toward the abutting property by a few feet, the narrow strip of land lying between the registered boundary and the wall was still owned by the registered land owner with the difference that the land so owned was not subject to registration of title. In this case, the certificate of title did not specifically call for the stone wall; only the Land Court plan called for the wall (although it would seem arguable that the plan was incorporated into the certificate of title by reference). It was implied that had the certificate of title specifically called for the wall, the result may have been different. In that case, the registered land may have run to the center of the wall, wherever the wall happened to be. In a case like this it would be in the surveyor’s best interest to show both lines on the plan and clearly label them

The comment I highlighted in red was by Paul Gay in the original. I agree with this view and I think the present Court would be more likely to take it.

This the url to the P. Gay article:

http://www.pobonline.com/copyright/f328be768d0f6010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____?view=print

>
> Wait, Wait, WAIT!! You mean you don't use THE MANUAL in NH? What a bunch of Neanderthals you guys must be....;-)

Don't have one Massachusetts either, like Virginia, with nearly 400 years of common law and common sense to guide us we don't need no stinkin manual😉

> Face it. There isn't a single surveyor who can set a jr monument precisely on a sr line. They might get it close enough that some measurement expert might "accept" it as "close enough," but there will always be some "expert" who will come along and place a tack on the cap at the "right" position.

This is what makes me think that some surveyors have very limited experience. Surveyors in Austin were able to run transit lines 100 years ago so well that even today the allignment errors in their work are hardly worth correcting. What JB probably means is that all of the surveying in Utah is so sloppily done or the land so worthless that he'd rather not think about surveying anything properly.

> Mathematics has nothing to do with whether or not a monument marks a corner. "Straight" or "curved" lines don't either.

Well, if geometry weren't a branch of mathematics, that might be true. Geometry is, however, a part of mathematics, so it obviously isn't.

Don Poole> Sean

Thanks Sean, I had not remembered that case.
When I first started working with the Land Court back in '83' you could make minor changes to the plans without difficulty. Then suddenly in the later 80's the attitude presented above in the Gay issue was adopted and the number became inviolate. Now it seems that calmer heads prevail and there is understanding that the bonds control......

See you Friday in Holyoke?

Don Poole

No,

I won't be at Holyoke, I let my membership lapse after I retired a few years ago.
Maybe I should re up, just to get involved with the profession again and keep my mind from turning to Jello.

I have a question, do you have a copy of the '53 Land Court standards?. I'm curious about the closure requirements.

I hope it's a good weekend for the Convention.

Don Poole> Sean

Think that unwritten property rights is getting mixed up in this debate, those are the things that encourage bending senior lines. Bending ownership lines with the necessary recordings is fine, bending senior lines without them is simply taking from one and giving to another, we don't have that authority and if challenged, there is a 50-50 chance that your decision was the wrong one.
jud

Don Poole>> Sean

I'll take a peek around and see if I have them.

Nope, the oldest I have are from 1971... 1/12,000 was the required closure then, v for class A, Class B was 1/10,000 but discouraged it except in various mountainous territory...

>
> This is what makes me think that some surveyors have very limited experience. Surveyors in Austin were able to run transit lines 100 years ago so well that even today the allignment errors in their work are hardly worth correcting. What JB probably means is that all of the surveying in Utah is so sloppily done or the land so worthless that he'd rather not think about surveying anything properly.
>

Kent, I can't fathom this idea that accurate measurements aren't important' to me it is a great disservice to the profession.

Regarding the skill of the surveyors of Austin, apparently their contemporaries in Massachusetts were expected to have similar skills as evidenced by the following:

XV. Ratio Of Closure.

2. Class A. — The ratio of closure of these surveys should not exceed 1:10000, but when we receive the finished product, errors adjusted, the results should be exact.

3. Class B. — The ratio of closure of these surveys should not exceed 1:8000.

4. Class C. — l:5000.

5. Class D. —- 1:3000.

6. Class E. — 1:1500

taken from the 1913 MASS LAND COURT INSTRUCTIONS

Don Poole>> Sean

Thanks Don,

It's not of any great importance and I sure I can get that info from the Court.
Take a look at my reply to Kent above, and see how far we've come since 1913.

Don Poole> Sean

> ...Bending ownership lines with the necessary recordings is fine, bending senior lines without them is simply taking from one and giving to another...> jud

Right to the point, Jud.

Some lands in Hawaii are in the Land Court system, and there is pretty clearly no other way to add to or subtract from the senior parcel without going through all the required steps and submittals required by the Land Court. Along with everything else that's been written here, this is instructive regarding junior/senior rights in our "regular" system.

Massachusetts standards

> Kent, I can't fathom this idea that accurate measurements aren't important' to me it is a great disservice to the profession.

Yes, it is more than a little unsettling that land surveying was practiced to higher standards in 1930 than presently in many places where posters work. Now, we even have posters wondering what a "line" is, amazingly enough.

Just as a note in passing, one of the most excellent land surveyors in practice in Central Texas was a fellow named O.E. Metcalfe, who worked between 1900 and 1950 and came from ... Massachusetts.

My example was under the assumption that you have no evidence that the rebars are in the wrong place. Let's assume that the surveyor that set them died in a fire that destroyed all his records.