Thanks Al. Very interesting.
Good to see that my professional organization, NJSPLS, threw them at least $2,500 as well as a company I use on occasion, Signature Information Solutions.
I thought you as well as Guy would like this.
I have recently downloaded a 105 page deed to the Manumuskin Preserve.I already new of maybe a dozen stones on the preserve most of which I or Guy plotted to but there are three that I just wandered into while rambling and i thought the deed might explain them.I"m sure it does,there seem to be a hundred stones on the deed though I"m sure some are repeats since the deed records each and every tract that makes up the preserve ever since we bought it off the indians it seems. Out of all those stones I have only found two and one the stone was gone but a monument was there.Those two i found started off easily recognized POB"s on the deed.The rest of them start at places that leave me scratching my head though I"m sure a hundred or two hundred years ago were commbn knowldge in the area. I have one excellent map of the area but it only covers the southwest third of the area.It obviously extended further but I have a section of it that was in a book about the Burcham Farm.The stones I am in question about are just off the eastern edge of this map and appear to have been owned by an Abraham Jones in 1741 if they were there that far back.I went online hoping to dredge up some old maps that would help me find some of the corners to these lots that were owned by people obviously long gone to be with the Lord. Thats how I found this site.Hopefully something will turn up when they get all these maps online.I see dozens upon dozens of stones in an area I know quite well but I know it by 21st century standards..A typical POB would be a white oak stump 33 links from the edge of Manumuskin near the barn where Simon Shaw enters his meadow. I have to get straight out there and find that stump now! Theirs a dozen stones on that tract!Who was Simon Shaw? and where is his meadow???
..A typical POB would be a white oak stump 33 links from the edge of Manumuskin near the barn where Simon Shaw enters his meadow. I have to get straight out there and find that stump now! Theirs a dozen stones on that tract!Who was Simon Shaw? and where is his meadow???
I have worked on a few like that in my career Al. One was a job that we started out doing gratis for a client/friend. He had bought the ground without a survey and even the seller never really knew where all of his land really was. There were references to an old barn wall for establishing alignment, stumps and pine knots for corners and a few stones throughout the old deed. The legal description in the deed had been recycled over and over again because no one ever had it surveyed.
After much research, cacamalations, head scratching, two Saturdays worth of fieldwork and wading in and out of cedar swamps, we were able to establish only two lines with any degree of reasonable certainty. At that point we told him that Gratis had left the building. He was happy with the corners we discovered along the two lines and was more than happy to pull the plug on the rest of the work. Win-Win !