We were driving out to the farm the other day and saw a for sale sign on a property just down the road. I went on the real estate sales website to look it up. I was curious to see if the property shared a boundary with the farm. There is an old homestead up there that I remember going to when I was a very young child. Grandma and Mom had taken me to an auction they were having. I was given a hot dog and placed in a little blue wagon and pulled all around. Grandma bought the jelly cupboard that’s in the kitchen. It was painted with several coats of white enamel and Pop-Pop let me “help” him scrape the paint off. That cupboard is the only piece of furniture I will inherit from the farm and I cherish it.

I scrolled through the pictures in the real estate listing and it’s a beautiful property. The old home place is pretty dilapidated but it sits up on the hill in a huge meadow surrounded by trees. There’s about 150 acres, mostly treed hillsides. It has a steep price tag considering its location. But what interested me was that little “dog leg” piece you see out front.

I remember my grandparents telling the story of how they bought a four acre strip of land out front that would give their farm direct access to the road. They bought that strip from their neighbor and friend for the grand sum of $1.00. I imagine Pop-Pop did some work for the man as payment. That was often the case back in the day. As I looked at this tax map of the property that was on the website, I got to thinking about that story and not knowing if our properties are adjacent, I made a trip to the County Courthouse yesterday afternoon.

I started in the Tax Assessors office and was quickly referred to the County Clerk’s Office. After going back and forth at least three more times, I finally had enough information to answer my question. First of all, the long axis of the properties do not touch, save for the narrow strips in the front. That “dog leg” of theirs is 12.5 acres and I know ours is only four. I’m glad I got the information I needed but I also got an interesting lesson in the history of the area and how incredibly convoluted land lines are in West Virginia.

The only land purchases I have had experience with were in Colorado. Being a much newer state, the land tracts started out much bigger. And everything is surveyed. West Virginia? Not so much. I could not find a survey or land plat for our farm or either of the adjoining properties. As I was searching through the deeds in the County Clerk’s Office, one of the county surveyors came in to do some research. The clerk and I were discussing how much a land survey costs and she asked him. He laughed. It could be anywhere from $500 to $10,000 depending on the size of the property and whether you can ride a 4-wheeler around the perimeter. That’s when I laughed. Most of the property out there is steep, heavily forested hillsides dipping down into narrow “hollers”. There’s no way a 4-wheeler could make it through that.

The most fascinating thing I found was the description of the property lines on the deeds. This deed for the four acre piece out front was made on April 17, 1946 and reads like this:

“Beginning at a stone pine in an original line, and a corner of _________’s lands, thence with said original line and using old call S. 9 E. 45.5 poles to a stone pile original corner; thence with another original line and using old call S. 83 W. 9. poles to a point in road; thence with said road N. 3 degrees 50’ W. 25 poles; thence N. 19 degrees 20’ W. 16 poles and 3.5 links; thence leaving said road N. 71 degrees 20’ E. 16.5 poles to place of beginning, containing 4 acres, more or less.”

What?

The surveyor explained it to me like this. He can decide he’s going to sell five acres of his place. He can go out, set four stakes, call it five acres and if the buyer agrees, you’re done. That’s because most property like that is bought and sold for cash. If the property is financed, it needs to be surveyed. And who can afford that?

It’s a pretty crazy system and led to a really fun afternoon of research. When I was done at the Assessor’s office, I drove back out past the farm to where they are building the road out to the new gas compressor. I wanted to find out exactly where it was on this new map I had in hand. The flaggers couldn’t pick it out on the map, so I asked for landmarks. When they told me it was on the ridge above the old church, I knew exactly where it was and my work was done.

Four acres for a dollar. We’ll never see that again. ❤️

“The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭13:14-15‬ ‭ESV‬‬