Keep the thread updated I'm curious to know what you find.
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Shawn Billings, post: 411424, member: 6521 wrote: It's an old tree with several scars....There is some old wire in it, but only a couple of inches deep, like it was tacked on to the tree out of convenience. Of course seeing that is has only grown 6 inches in diameter in 111 years (if it's the same tree), could put that wire being there much longer than I realized...
About the wire, whadda you mean "tacked on to the tree out of convenience"?
I'm going to hypothesize that before the tree starts the process of embedding the fence wire. The wire is pushed away by the tree until at some point in time in the embedding begins.
So there may be a added timeline to old wire.
It wasn't very deep. There was only one strand of wire that I could see. In other places I noticed old wire tacked to pretty young (six inch or smaller) trees. I figured at some time it was a convenient stable object to tack the wire to after the old posts had rotted.
But if the tree only grew six inches in diameter, then that would mean it only grew in radius about 3 inches since 1906. If the wire is buried two inches deep, that could be pretty old.
My experience has been that the wire doesn't get pushed very much. I'm sure that there is a little, but mostly the tree just absorbs the foreign objects in my experience.
Clayton walley, post: 411436, member: 11971 wrote: Keep the thread updated I'm curious to know what you find.
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There may not be much to add. Even if I proved it was a "pointer" I wouldn't know what to do with it. 🙂
In NC a pointer tree has 3 chops facing the corner. At least in my area.
We have deeds here that call for pointer trees all of the time. They are just a blazed tree (typically 3 blazes in the direction of the corner). They typically do not specify a distance or direction in the deed from the pointer to the corner. Most times they call for multiple pointers.
Those are called signal trees...
Clayton walley, post: 411428, member: 11971 wrote:
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That is a signal tree.
Shawn Billings, post: 411419, member: 6521 wrote: I have a deed from 1906 that calls for an 18" Post Oak for Pointer. This isn't the current deed but I abstracted back to get a better feel for the boundary construction. I noticed a 24" Post Oak that seemed to have lived a rough life about 5' South of where I set my corner. I tied the tree as it seemed significant, even though I wasn't aware of the pointer call at the time. I assume (which is dangerous) that a pointer is very near to a corner, close enough not to bother with direction and distance, but this is only an assumption. Anyone familiar with the significance of the term "pointer"?
Thanks.
A pointer tree (at least in my experience) is just another term for a witness tree that is blazed facing the point.
I use my pin locator for finding fence in trees and underground along boundaries all the time.
It is common to find old fence corners aside older fence corner post holes as is the practice of fence builders and their maintaining a stable post to set the new corner post and braces before transferring the wire.
Many times the original rock was thrown in the bottom of the original hole.
The fact that you have found the deed distances, fence corner and pointer so close together, you must be in the right neighborhood for placement of the monument.
Without actual bearing and/or distance from the pointer, how can you do more.
Those bent over trees remind me of the many I have seen in the woodlands of NE Texas as the result of the day dozens of tornadoes came thru laying waste and covering a few states in area with a few feet of dust in the 1930s.
Somehow they lived thru the drought of that era and while laying sideways and pointing to the NE and grew to maturity with all limbs being on one side growing toward the sky.
Most every old deed in west Ky. calls for pointers. Whatever tree was close by, sometimes there are several at each corner if they are in the woods. May have hack marks facing the corner. Here, its common to see traces of wire smack in the middle of a 30" oak, I doubt it gets pushed any by tree growth.
I was taught the practice of not marking a tree as a "pointer" unless I could stand at the corner and hack it with a bush axe. They are pretty common here and every one I have found was marked 3 hacks facing corner.
If you get your bore, try boring in the face of the tree that you believe to be facing the corner at average breast height, you can often pick up discolored scarred wood from an old X or blaze. I have seen the term pointer trees in a few old deeds, one of my surveyor friends who used to work for LSLS Ralph Daniels said that Mr. Ralph told him the pointer trees were in a cardinal direction from the Corner and blazed on the side facing the Corner
On the size of the tree I once found an GLO original tree in the Ozarks that had only grown 12" in a 150 years. It was setting on a solid shelf of rock, it only had about 2 feet of soil, it was a Post Oak also.
