Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On May 11, 2008, at 11:56 AM, Roy Morgan wrote:
> > A sure sign that water is near the surface. Good for quantity.  See  
> > if  you can get the well driller's records.
>
> I will do that.  Of course the ground water may be quite different  
> from any aquifer at some depth.

Oh, yes. I was too terse. I meant that the dug well is a strong  
indication that adequate water quantity exists or existed not very far  
down at time of house erection. The suggestion that you see the well  
driller's records is to give you peace of mind that the well is deep  
enough to ensure resistance to contamination--and part of that will  
come from knowing how the driller cased the well.

>  The well where we are now is some 200+ feet deep.  Celia was  
> concerned that runoff from the nearby barn might get into it.  I  
> don't think so.  It's on the list of things to do to find out about  
> the well (and the septic).
>
> > Straight boundary lines? That and level land makes it easy once you
> > have the numbers and a starting point.
>
> The place is essentially a square, with the cemetery taking up one  
> corner.  This area apparently was deeded up originally in quarters  
> or whatever, and the roads show evidence of that, quite rectilinear  
> in layout.

That suggests at least two possibilities. Land that was part of the  
Public Land Survey System starts out as townships, 36 sections, six  
miles square; the sections are 640 acres, one mile each square side. A  
quarter-section is therefore 160 acres, still square. A quarter- 
quarter is therefore 40 acres, again, still square. At this point land  
subdividers did and do various cuts, depending on local conditions.  
Road frontage being valuable, 40s tend to be cut narrow and long, what  
we Realtors call bowling alleys, sometimes four 10-acre pieces each  
with only 330 feet of road frontage and 1,320 feet of depth.

Now, it might well be that you can forget all that. That is for  
educational purposes of potential purchasers of country land that was  
in fact surveyed by the PLSS, which is most of the country.

New York, part of the United States before the U.S. government sent  
surveyors out to measure the Louisiana Purchase, used the system of  
land survey known as metes and bounds. This is that fun and  
exasperating way of describing property lines such as: Beginning at  
the fork of the such and such streams and going ESE for 1,260 feet to  
the really big oak tree, thence North 2,300 feet to the large stone in  
the front yard of the Smith property, thence . . . well, you get it-- 
the streams moved, the oak tree long since died, and the subsequent  
owners of the Smith property moved the big stone to their back yard  
and built a BBQ against it.

So you will now find out if your potential property was laid out  
according to town plat (my bet), metes and bounds, or possibly the  
later-adopted PLSS, which made life ever so much more simple,  
especially because it established Base and Meridian lines that ran  
true north-south and east-west, as contrasted with metes and bounds,  
which ran along creeks and roads and fences and ridges and whatever  
someone found handy.

We are looking forward to having you educate us on how things were  
done in the lovely Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. Future  
property owners will be appreciative.