Wolfspider found the W.P. 1700 stone!

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,602
8,181
All,

I want to inform all of you that Wolfspider has succeeded in finding the WP 1700 stone. He has been quietly and persistently looking for it with no help from me since I had no idea where it was. All I was able to give him was words of encouragement. Using the limited information he had to go by, he somehow tracked it down. I want to personally congratulate him for his success, and thank him for keeping me informed of his efforts.

Wolfspider...No matter how hard or easy it was to find, I am most impressed on you persistence. Congratulations!


http://forums.njpinebarrens.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=268&pos=20

Guy
 

wolfspider05

Explorer
Nov 12, 2004
223
11
39
Riverside Nj
All,

I want to inform all of you that Wolfspider has succeeded in finding the WP 1700 stone. He has been quietly and persistently looking for it with no help from me since I had no idea where it was. All I was able to give him was words of encouragement. Using the limited information he had to go by, he somehow tracked it down. I want to personally congratulate him for his success, and thank him for keeping me informed of his efforts.

Wolfspider...No matter how hard or easy it was to find, I am most impressed on you persistence. Congratulations!


http://forums.njpinebarrens.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=268&pos=20

Guy


Thanks!!!! :D
 
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bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,153
4,258
Pines; Bamber area
All, I want to inform all of you that Wolfspider has succeeded in finding the WP 1700 stone. [/url]Guy

Guy, clearly that is made of paper mache. You have been duped.


Congratulations Wolf, I could not resist teasing Guy........the vivid colors gave me the thought.
:D
 
Congratulations, Wolfspider on such a spectacular find! Without giving away the exact location of this survey marker, can you tell me whether it is on the East New Jersey or West New Jersey side of the Keith Line? Determining that information will be the first step in identifying the proper survey within the appropriate Surveyor General's records. It the stone does mark a William Penn tract, and I have little doubt that it does, the date carved in the stone will allow me to zero in on the exact survey and surveyor that set the stone in its place.

I appreciate any information you can provide.

Best regards,
Jerseyman
 

wolfspider05

Explorer
Nov 12, 2004
223
11
39
Riverside Nj
Thanks guys!!


Jerseyman, I believe that it is located on the west jersey side of Keith's Line. Hope that can help. The stone isn't huge but not small, roughly the size of a beachball, give or take a few. I have very little knowledge of USGS survey markers, any information on it that anyone can get, I would be very interested.

Don
 

wolfspider05

Explorer
Nov 12, 2004
223
11
39
Riverside Nj
All,

One more small piece of advice that I forgot to mention and its kind of ironic.
If you decide to go the firefighters memorial off to the left in the woods about 100 feet or so is a dead dalmatian. Looks to have been there for a few weeks, I noticed something white and walked up to it. Not sure what it died from, appears to be from starvation. I have a love for dogs, (i have 3 jack russells) so it was sort of upsetting. I would call someone from the township but I am not sure who to call, or I was thinking about just going out and giving it a proper burial. Just a word of advice, I know some people hate to see things like that, including myself.
 

ecampbell

Piney
Jan 2, 2003
2,840
958
Don, I am also a JRT fan. I owned 3 for quite awhile, a mother and 2 of her sons. The last died in Feb 2006 at 18 years 8 months. I am now looking for a pup. Do you hunt, race them? I attend the Northgate, Breezwood trials and also the JRTCA Nationals.

What is the significance of the WP 1700 stone?
If 1700 is the year it was inscribed, that's really impressive. Guy, have you ever seen any other inscribed stones? Roughly, where is it located? A nearby town, or the county would help me put it in perspective.

Ed
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,602
8,181
I have visited quite a few inscribed stones. Most of them are no longer around because people think they own them when they see them.

For example:

main.php


We have no idea what WP1700 actually means, but Ben said maybe William Penn when we first learned of it. But we all must remember what a property owner told me about an inscribed stone on their property that was dated in the 1700’s. There are no records of it until the mid 1800’s which leads them to believe it was predated. So the WP 1700 stone could be from the mid or late 1800’s. The owner of the property could have known that the property was first claimed or acquired in 1700 so they put a stone there saying that.

In any event it is a good find and I am in the process of supplying Wolfspider with locations that may hold more of them. I may try to get down that way and do some preliminary searching to give him some help. Hopefully he can find more if he so desires.

Guy
 

wolfspider05

Explorer
Nov 12, 2004
223
11
39
Riverside Nj
I know I am bringing this thread back from the dead, but has anyone else noticed that the backside of the WP stone has JM 1742 etched in it? Who was JM? Another mystery. I am almost positive that this stone has to do with the east/west jersey proprietorship that William Penn established. I am in contact with a historian from Philadelphia, he is trying to dig up some information for me that would link it up for sure.

Here is some info, the underlined sentence makes sense why the NJ 20 marker is right besides it:

Today, for practical purposes that amounts to a company named Taylor, Wiseman and Taylor; but we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. By 1684 a surveyed line clearly needed to be established between the two proprietorships, as declared by the following resolution:

"Award we do hereby declare, that [the line] shall runn from ye north side of ye mouth or Inlet of ye beach of little Egg Harbor north north west and fifty minutes more westerly according to naturall position and not according to ye magnet whose variation is nine degrees westward."

To clarify those quaint words, the survey was not to make the mistake made in the layout of Philadelphia, whose streets had intended to be true north and south but by using Magnetic North are actually six degrees off from that. Another important point is probably unclear to modern readers, who know the town of Egg Harbor on the mainland of Barnegat Bay, but are largely unaware that the "beach of Egg Harbor" was what we now call Long Beach Island, on the east side of Barnegat Bay. The southern anchor of The Line was in what we now call Beach Haven, on the north side of the inlet. Hardly anyone seems to be aware of it, but reread the sentence and see that the meaning is quite clear. The northern end of The Line is not explicit, but comes out slightly above Trenton on the Delaware River. Word of mouth has it that William Penn wanted to have both sides of the river for his anticipated home at Pennsbury.

For its time, the survey of The Line was a significant engineering achievement. The general plan was to lay out the course of the line in the wilderness until it hit a big boulder, or anything else that was large and heavy. This became a marker along a line of 150 markers which could be used for local surveys and boundaries. A few years ago, a group of volunteers tried to locate all of the original markers and found 55 of them. The historical project took ten years.

All of the deeds of property in the State of New Jersey still depend on the original survey and the meticulous notes kept by the Surveyors General of these two Quaker organizations, without whose private records every title to every property would be clouded. So, without the need to get ugly about it, these soft-spoken courteous folks have a form of power it would be hard to match with sticks and stones, guns, threats or legalisms. There is little reason to inquire further why these organizations survived the revolution which overthrew King George, and why no one has seen fit to enter serious challenge to their claim of owning the whole state except for what they had already lawfully sold.

Link: http://www.philadelphia-reflections.com/topic/50.htm
 

gipsie

Explorer
Sep 14, 2008
547
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55
atlantic county
I have been looking into this for awhile, having found the stone and noticing the other side for quite some time now. I wish I knew someone else was looking for it, I would have gladly helped. If anyone wants to team up on some research, let me know. I will be more than happy to try to solve this mystery that has been driving me nuts for some time now.

Guy, I think I mentioned this to you when I first came aboard...
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,602
8,181
I have been looking into this for awhile, having found the stone and noticing the other side for quite some time now. I wish I knew someone else was looking for it, I would have gladly helped. If anyone wants to team up on some research, let me know. I will be more than happy to try to solve this mystery that has been driving me nuts for some time now.

Guy, I think I mentioned this to you when I first came aboard...

Yes you did.

As I have said before many stones are predated, and I suspect the same is true here. More than likely it was placed there in the 1800's. I have copies of many old survey maps made from the 1700's, and rarely is a stone mentioned. I believe the reason is there weren't many. An example is the WP1700 stone. First we thought 1700, then we find it was 1742, and next maybe it will be 1842.

Guy
 

gipsie

Explorer
Sep 14, 2008
547
67
55
atlantic county
Hopefully we will know more about it soon, I would like to know, this mystery has been like an itch that I can't scratch for a long time now.


Well, if you ever want help with research maybe we could exchange information. It has also been an itch of mine and I would love to figure it out. I reached out to someone else once on another site, we had some dialogue and I thought we were going to do some research, but I haven't heard from them. I have been doing some web searching but not sure where else to start....
 

wolfspider05

Explorer
Nov 12, 2004
223
11
39
Riverside Nj
This is the reply to an email that I wrote to George Ross Fisher MD, who hopefully can help us get some answers on it. I have sent him a picture, he has yet to get back to me on it but it I sent it only a day ago.




"As a guess, I would say you have stumbled on one of the markers from Beach Haven to the Upper Delaware, marking the division between East Jersey and West Jersey. As it happens, I have a regular monthly meeting with the Surveyor General, and will ask him. Sometimes he can't make it, so keep me reminded if I don't write back. Did you photograph it?"
 
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