Perhaps a couple more thoughts in the matter of early descriptions will be helpful.  While the procedure for issuing patents early prescribed a formal survey and those were being accomplished by approved/appointed surveyors early in the 18th Century, subsequent subdivisions of those tracts had no such requirement in the law.

If the parties found it convenient and thought it necessary and affordable, surveys were done and became more and more common.  Still, hundreds of thousands of tracts were later sold by subdividing owners of those patents/grants by using "metes and bounds" - post to stone to tree to road to stream, etc. - descriptions.  So it is that we find such descriptions used in myriad deeds executed even down to early in the 20th Century.

Finally, perhaps, it is interesting that while Johnson in 1755 spelled the word "metes", that spelling was quite gone and replaced by "meets" in the 1802 edition of his classic dictionary.  Nonetheless, the lawyers and surveyors used the old spelling for yet another century, it appears.

I have posted a typical "course and distances" survey done in 1793 in PA near the MD border.  On my  website, scroll, down to "Document of the month" and click to see that actual survey.

Genealogy without documentation is nothing.
                     Paul Drake JD
                Genealogist & Author
            <www.DrakesBooks.com>



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