What is the history and origin of the following terms? How long they been around?
fence line surveyor
deed staker
> What is the history and origin of the following terms? How long they been around?
> fence line surveyor
> deed staker
I'd never heard the term "deed staker" until someone from PLSSia used it on an earlier message board perhaps about 14 years ago. I don't think I've ever heard it used in Texas.
As for fence line surveying, that began probably in the early 20th century when the quality of land surveyors dropped off, particularly in many rural areas, and a legion of duffers showed up who were able to drag a chain along a fenceline but not able to do much more than that.
"PLSSia"
How long has that one been around, and from where? Is it good or bad to be from PLSSia? Unless I move I suppose I'm stuck in PLSSia.
PLSSia might have been mine. I'm not totally sure. I will claim the 0.04' for sure.
Both have been around since shortly after my arrival on the true POB.
I had not heard deed staker until participating there and here.
The first time I heard fenceline surveyor was from a fellow surveyor who had been lead to believe that "The Gospel According to BLM" was the only correct solution to any PLSSia concern.
Yeah, as far as I know a previous incarnation of Holy Cow did start the 0.04' thing.
I think the fenceline term predates my time in the survey realm. I didn't think PLSSia went that far back. Talk about code talk, would any normal citizen have a clue if you used the term PLSSia?
PLSSia
> PLSSia might have been mine.
It seems to me that it should be obvious that "PLSSia" as a name for the broad expanse of states in the US where the rectangular survey had been imposed was coined by a surveyor from a metes and bounds state; one like, say, Texas.
PLSSia
> > PLSSia might have been mine.
>
> It seems to me that it should be obvious that "PLSSia" as a name for the broad expanse of states in the US where the rectangular survey had been imposed was coined by a surveyor from a metes and bounds state; one like, say, Texas.
That was funny:-D
>
> fence line surveyor
>
> deed staker
Never heard fence line surveyor until the 90s when RPLS.com went online. It doesn't apply to me in my area.
Deed staker was always one who ignored physical evidence and put in irons at the deed bearings and distances. Thereby causing the infamous pin cushion. (80s)
"Old Florida"
Where is that, St. Augustine?
"It's in the mind"
Much like Kent, I think these monikers are of Northern vintage and prior to POB in 1999, I'd never heard of them.
They make sense, but I'd never heard of them.
I don't think that they're northern either.
I think that they originated here, with/because of Richard Schaut.
Fence line surveyor goes way back-before the 70's for sure. A fence line surveyor would accept any fence corner.
Even go so far as to set two 1/4 corners in a fence line jog where the original record would show only one. When asked which one was the 1/4 he would say depends on which Section you are in.
As much as we might like to credit these terms to a survey message board in reality most precede the internet. I found these images in my files taken from writings at least 40 years old. 
Bogus theory!
linebender, your quotes define what I have been calling a bogus theory!
Thanks for posting it.
Keith
There were members of TSPS Chapter 4 with 3 digit license numbers talking about fence line surveyors in the early 70s when I joined.
I heard about deed stakers about the same time while in college from an artillery instructor from Fort Sill.
Gulliver's travels ?
Didn't Gulliver once wander into the land of the fence surveyors and the deed surveyors?
It seemed they have been at war for hundreds of years. Citizens had long forgotten the wars and now lived under a very uneasy truce of a sort. Many citizens had been killed in the long forgotten wars and even still a person from the land of the fence surveyors would be ill-advised to cross into the land of the deed surveyors.
. . . every once in a while a little skirmish over the central issue that defined their own particular society would rear it's ugly head.
Sometimes, daughters or sons of one group might meet and even marry into the family of the other group, but these marriages were general not long lived and the sons and daughters of these unholy alliances often face years of psychological healing.
The differences were so deep, if I remember the story right, that the two groups each, had their own unique way of cooking eggs . . . one group dispensing the contents of an egg into a pan from the small end, while the other, similarly, from the large end.
Even the use of words became affect . . . words or names that spelled the same forward or backward, were no longer used.
Mom & dad became mother and father for one group, or old-man and old-woman for the other.
One group fished exclusively with dry-flies, while the other group fished with wet flys, or even with streamers. They even went so far as to always fillet fish in one group, while the other group scaled their fish.
This went on for years and years . . . for so long that most citizens had no idea why they couldn't get along with one-another.
Then, one day, out of a blustery storm from the north . . . where all the really bad storms always came from . . . came a wave more terrible than the imagination could conceive.
There came, from the north a totally maniacal man who said he was the new wave of the future . . .
. . . a man who said that all will now bow to him or cease to exist . . .
Today, we call that man the GIS-man.
