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
congratulations wolf,great job.
