An exercise for the reader...
May. 17th, 2022 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo at work last week, I spent a lot of time cleaning up a mess from the before times.
Once upon a time, we bought a piece of ground on top of Tuscarora Mountain in rural south-central PA. The land was partly in Fulton county and partly in Franklin county, there was approximately 260 acres of it, and it had a bar at the top of the mountain.
The original deed from Sid Leech (the guy we bought it from) had a description that read as follows:
There were other tracts involved but the above-described tract is the one of interest to us here. Note that it refers exclusively to various sorts of trees, rebar and spikes having not yet been invented at this juncture. Also, given the bearings and distances listed above, this tract DOES NOT CLOSE and the perimeter error is about 30%.
This transaction also had some exclusions (smaller pieces of ground that had been previously sold to someone else and thus were not conveyed in this transaction). Here are the exclusions.
Because the exclusions are numerous, I'm going to highlight the ones of special concern for today's problem solving.
Basically we are here concerned with Lots 227, 228, 229 and the east 25' of 230.
What lots are these? These are the lots sold by the Tuscarora Company, said lots located on, like, a drawing that's on file at the courthouse. I've seen the drawing. There isn't any actual surveying stuff on the drawing and there are no written dimensions of any sort on it except a note that says SCALE ABOUT 300 FT PER INCH which is not... y'know... not really that great.
Oh, well. At least there is a drawing, right?
Right. Here is the drawing in case you are experiencing difficulty imagining how utterly useless this thing is:
The drawing is from 1915. See, the Tuscarora Company had an ox roast / free lunch on top of the Tuscarora Mountain on July 24, 1915. It was well attended. The July 29 Fulton County News says "between 2500 and 5000" people attended. The county currently has approximately 14,500 people living it it NOW, so that was a lot of people in 1915.
At the ox roast, they basically said how great the railroad they were gonna build was gonna be and how there was going to be a development on top of the mountain and it was going to be called Tuscarora Heights and it was gonna be super AWESOME and you best get in on the ground floor, I say, I say, I say. Gonna put this part of Pennsylvania ON THE MAP for realsies.
The railroad never got built, a lot of the Tuscarora Company went to jail for fraud, and this part of Pennsylvania never got ON THE MAP so much as ON A SHITTY UNSCALED DRAWING that has been doing nothing but causing problems for the inhabitants and the Recorder of Deeds and most importantly, me. But county legend suggests it was one hell of a party at the ox roast. ANYWAY. That's what we're dealing with, here.
If you peer at the shitty unscaled drawing (it embiggens), you can locate the individual lots on the shitty unscaled drawing but finding them in the real world is a little more problematic. LINCOLN HIGHWAY (US State Route 30) still exists and you can use that for reference, maybe, assuming it hasn't moved too much since 1915.
For our purposes, the first mystery tract (made of Lots 227 and 228 and the western 10' of lot 229) appears in the deed books precisely two times. First, when the Magsam (or possibly Magason, it's recorded under both names) brothers bought the damned things. That was in July, 1915.
The second appearance was in 1917 when at least one of the lots was leased (NOT SOLD) to Leslie Seylar:
There are no other transfers from the Magsams or Magasons or whatever their actual names are to anyone else in the deed records of Franklin County. There are no wills recorded for the Magsams or Magasons in Franklin County. These pieces of ground just fall off the planet. Hunh. Also, the current GIS tax map (which is doing the Very Best It Can with absolutely shit deed descriptions) does not show any taxable land at all for these alleged lots.
Our second problematic tract, the west 20' of Lot 229 and the east 25' of Lot 230, appears a bit more often in the historical record, even POST-WWI. This tract probably has an actual owner, though who that might be at the moment is a bit iffy.
The 229/230 tract was bought by Percy Smith from The Tuscarora Company.
Percy Smith died but Strite and Widow-of-Percy Dottie Smith sold the land to Rouzer in 1942, helpfully after the invention of the typewriter so that you youngsters in the lexience do not have to read cursive.
Rouzer, something of a Man with a Plan, bought up some other lots on top of the mountain and then, in 1972, issued a deed FROM himself TO himself consolidating this piece and some other pieces he'd acquired. (This is not, in and of itself, a shady thing. It's pretty normal to consolidate various pieces into a single deed.)
However, when Rouzer did it... there was some definite shady going on.
Read that description again. Notice anything missing?
Hint: Where is tract 229/230 that was enumerated in the Strite/Smith to Rouzer deed?
Notice anything EXTRA?
Hint: Lot 3 was not ever owned by Rouzer and I know this because *we* owned Lot 3 and deeded it in 2009 to a Mr. William Lowe who currently owns it.
Hint: Lot E never belonged to Rouzer. I know this because, again, WE own it right now (along with lots F, G, H, and I on the original 1915 drawing) and WE are in the process of selling it to Mr. Mark Eigenbrode. Rouzer's deed probably really means Lot D, here, because in the transfer from Rouzer to Gipe Family Trust (see below) he lists a Lot D.
Having allegedly consolidated stuff, then in 2001, Rouzer sold land to the Gipe Family Trust, to wit:
We can see here that "Lot E" has been rectified to read "Lot D"... but Lots 229/230 are still missing and the Not Owned By Rouzer Lot 3 is included.
The Gipe Family Trust sold the "same piece of ground" in 2013 to Massa, who currently owns it.
I don't think Massa has any idea about the Lot 229/230 tract or about their lack of ownership of Lot 3. But this is not my problem. We're just now getting to my problem.
My problem is that in 1993, my dad made an Agreement of Sale to Mr. Eigenbrode to sell him the remainder of the land that we owned in Peters Township, Franklin County on or near the top of Tuscarora Mountain. It more-or-less looked like this:
(The part we were selling is labeled "residue", well, that part LESS A SMALL NOTCH out of the upper left corner of that piece (the Rouzer tract of Lot 229/230 fame) is what we are actually conveying.)
Here's that piece, more or less, overlaid in red on the 1915 crappy drawing:
When Dad did the agreement of sale, the property description that we had was... not great. Recall, we started with the TREE-BASED description from Sid Leech in 1969. Later, we transferred the section in Peters Township to a different company that we still owned and at that time, the description looked like this:
That's still not a great description, there.
By the time Mr. Eigenbrode got his agreement of sale paid off, which was like this month, the Franklin County Recorder of Deeds had started to, y'know, PLOT the descriptions to verify that they formed CLOSED POLYGONAL SHAPES that could actually represent a piece of ground.
We found this out by giving Mr. Eigenbrode a deed using the property description from the 1993 Agreement of Sale, which was... less than ideal. I suspect it probably described the piece of ground we intended to sell Mr. Eigenbrode and also described the piece of ground that Mr. Eigenbrode intended to buy, so good try, but it... did not pass muster with the Recorder of Deeds' newfangled expectation that property descriptions have actual dimensions and actual bearings and form closed polygonal shapes and stuff.
The stupid descriptions we'd been doing heretofore were not super useful. Also, neither of our two descriptions (the one from Leech to us and the one we had in the transfer from Company A to Company B of us) was particularly plottable or really closed, so I get that the Recorder of Deeds had a valid beef there. But, Mr. Eigenbrode, having at long last paid off the Agreement of Sale here recently, needed a legit deed. He really needed a legit deed because he had ALREADY SOLD the piece of ground to someone else and that person, the NEW GUY, wanted a deed. Naturally. As one does. I mean, none of this is unreasonable. (Yet.)
Then Mr. Eigenbrode asked me to generate a deed from US directly to NEW GUY, as if we'd just sold it to NEW GUY directly for the amount of the sale with Eigenbrode, leaving him whole and entire out of the picture.
Er, no.
Mr. Eigenbrode said The taxes will get paid. I don't see why you are not going along with this. What's it to you?
Mr. Eigenbrode bought the property for about 24K. That's what he pays transfer tax on if we give a deed to him.
Mr. Eigenbrode SOLD the property for close to 100K. That's what NEW GUY should pay transfer taxes on.
If I give a deed directly from us to NEW GUY, then NEW GUY pays transfer tax on a "purchase price" of 24K, which in no way reflects reality and the county doesn't get ANYTHING on the ~100K that Mr. Eigenbrode sold it for to NEW GUY.
Also Mr. Eigenbrode then shows NO CAPITAL GAIN on the sale of land that he "never owned" despite netting a capital gain of like 80K.
No. Not gonna be a party to that sort of tax evasive shit. We don't play like that 'round here.
Mr. Eigenbrode, by his own description, is a godly and religious man, like he goes around casually asking random strangers iffn they're Right With Christ and have Accepted Jesus As Their Lord And Savior but apparently he ain't feeling the Matthew 22:21 even though it's written in red and errything.
(I did not point out his hypocrisy during the phone conversation that ended when he hung up on me after I denied him the third time on the "Can't you just write the deed for the NEW GUY?" issue. It is not useful or productive to point out the hypocrisy of religious folks, only makes them angry.)
So anyway, I had to generate a deed description for Mr. Eigenbrode that would pass the *sigh* reasonable and legitimate sniff test of the Franklin County Recorder of Deeds... ideally without having to pay a surveyor and/or an attorney.
Finally, after about two hundred dollars worth of online deed research, I have managed to do that.
Fortunately for me, almost all of the bordering tracts of this piece of property have been surveyed and/or sold since the year 2000. They all have legit deeds that close and that have good property line descriptions with realistic bearings and distances. The only stupid piece left is that 229/230 thing in the 1942 Rouzer deed that evaporated in the 1972 Rouzer-to-Rouzer deed. (Nobody has done squat with the 227/228/eastern half of 229 since the year 1915 and nobody has paid taxes on it and I think it's just... missing? Anyway, it's to the WEST of the Rouzer tract, nearly vertical, and does not matter for the purposes of generating a deed for Mr. Eigenbrode. It's just delightfully illustrative of the problems inherent in the properties on top of the mountain.) Mr. Eigenbrode is only buying the stuff EAST of the Rouzer tract so we can ignore the 227/228 issue in generating a deed for him.
Here is what the GIS map shows (their lines are yellow and their picture is not-really-very-accurate), I have annotated it with the owners of the tracts plus also the lines as they probably should be.
The Binkley tract is recorded in both Fulton and Franklin counties (The county line is on top of the mountain because of course it is.) and it is taxed in Fulton (much cheaper) county so it doesn't appear on the Franklin County GIS map. The Fulton County GIS map has a totally incorrect drawing of the Binkley tract but again, that is not my problem. My drawing of the Binkley tract matches the survey done for the conveying of the Harnish tract in 2021 (the "residue" picture shows Binkley's property line because it is one of the borders of the Harnish tract).
Here's what I sent over to Eigenbrode as a description:
Beginning at the Northeast corner of the lands south of US Route 30 now or formerly of Alex Rouzer, said lands BEING “The east 20 feet of lot 229 and the west 25 feet of lot 230 on the plot of lots known as Tuscarora Heights recorded in Book 178 Page 195 in the Recorder’s Office of Franklin County”, recorded to Rouzer as Tract 1 in Book 312 p. 114 in the Recorder’s Office of Franklin County;
thence following the centerline of the US Route 30 right-of-way in a northeasterly direction to a point on the corner of lands now or formerly known as Tract 2 of Dezso and Mettille (Franklin County 2016, Instrument 201609799), an approximate bearing of North 66 degrees 75 minutes East and an approximate distance of 2665 feet as measured IN A STRAIGHT LINE though the property itself follows the centerline of the right of way of US Route 30;
thence bearing South 00 degrees 41 minutes 39 seconds East for a distance of 156.40 feet along the lands of Dezso and Metille to an iron pipe marking the corner of lands now or formerly of Billy G. Dinsmore and Florence V. Dinsmore (Franklin County 2007, Book 3654 p 194);
thence due South along lands of Dinsmore a distance of 633.84 feet to a point or pin at the corner of lands now or formerly of Randy L. and Tinna M. Davis (Franklin County 2018, Instrument# 201807458);
thence South 68 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds West along the lands of Davis a distance of 876.58 feet to a point at the corner of lands now or formerly of GV Properties LLC (Franklin County 2004, Book 2651 p. 118);
thence continuing the same South 68 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds West along the lands of GV Properties LLC a distance of 1976.39 feet to a 1” rebar on the corner of lands now or formerly of Travis Harnish (Franklin County 2021, Instrument #202134642);
thence North 35 degrees 39 minutes 4 seconds East 367.42 feet along the lands of Harnish to a 1” rebar;
thence in a northerly direction along the lands now or formerly of Binkley (2006, Franklin County Book 3160 p. 259 AND ALSO Fulton County Book 462 p 215) for a distance of 402.43 feet to the southwest corner of the aforementioned lands now or formerly of Rouzer;
thence North 62 degrees 54 minutes East 45 feet along the southern border of the lands of Rouzer to the southeast corner of said lands;
thence North 27 degrees 45 minutes West 150 feet along the eastern border of the lands of Rouzer to the place of BEGINNING, the tract measuring forty-two acres, more or less, and being the remaining portion of the lands of Valley-Hi Development Association Inc. situate in Peters Township, Franklin County that were acquired by deed dated December 1, 1973 from Lawther Manor, Inc. and recorded in Fulton County Deed Book 079 Page 416.
This is significantly more-involved than most property descriptions (I have read rather a lot of them over the last two weeks) but I feel like the people at the Recorder of Deeds might be happier with more detail.
Update (I waited to post this narrative until I had the how it came out part for you), It Was Recorded!
And now my tale is done. :) I am mostly done with the bullshit piece of ground that we bought in 1969 on top of Tuscarora Mountain. MOSTLY done. There are a few things, like for example the pieces of ground that are basically underneath the Geesaman tract and also the fact that Fulton County thinks we own land yet still in Ayr Township (we do not), but those are problems for another day.
Once upon a time, we bought a piece of ground on top of Tuscarora Mountain in rural south-central PA. The land was partly in Fulton county and partly in Franklin county, there was approximately 260 acres of it, and it had a bar at the top of the mountain.
The original deed from Sid Leech (the guy we bought it from) had a description that read as follows:
There were other tracts involved but the above-described tract is the one of interest to us here. Note that it refers exclusively to various sorts of trees, rebar and spikes having not yet been invented at this juncture. Also, given the bearings and distances listed above, this tract DOES NOT CLOSE and the perimeter error is about 30%.
This transaction also had some exclusions (smaller pieces of ground that had been previously sold to someone else and thus were not conveyed in this transaction). Here are the exclusions.
Because the exclusions are numerous, I'm going to highlight the ones of special concern for today's problem solving.
Basically we are here concerned with Lots 227, 228, 229 and the east 25' of 230.
What lots are these? These are the lots sold by the Tuscarora Company, said lots located on, like, a drawing that's on file at the courthouse. I've seen the drawing. There isn't any actual surveying stuff on the drawing and there are no written dimensions of any sort on it except a note that says SCALE ABOUT 300 FT PER INCH which is not... y'know... not really that great.
Oh, well. At least there is a drawing, right?
Right. Here is the drawing in case you are experiencing difficulty imagining how utterly useless this thing is:
The drawing is from 1915. See, the Tuscarora Company had an ox roast / free lunch on top of the Tuscarora Mountain on July 24, 1915. It was well attended. The July 29 Fulton County News says "between 2500 and 5000" people attended. The county currently has approximately 14,500 people living it it NOW, so that was a lot of people in 1915.
At the ox roast, they basically said how great the railroad they were gonna build was gonna be and how there was going to be a development on top of the mountain and it was going to be called Tuscarora Heights and it was gonna be super AWESOME and you best get in on the ground floor, I say, I say, I say. Gonna put this part of Pennsylvania ON THE MAP for realsies.
The railroad never got built, a lot of the Tuscarora Company went to jail for fraud, and this part of Pennsylvania never got ON THE MAP so much as ON A SHITTY UNSCALED DRAWING that has been doing nothing but causing problems for the inhabitants and the Recorder of Deeds and most importantly, me. But county legend suggests it was one hell of a party at the ox roast. ANYWAY. That's what we're dealing with, here.
If you peer at the shitty unscaled drawing (it embiggens), you can locate the individual lots on the shitty unscaled drawing but finding them in the real world is a little more problematic. LINCOLN HIGHWAY (US State Route 30) still exists and you can use that for reference, maybe, assuming it hasn't moved too much since 1915.
For our purposes, the first mystery tract (made of Lots 227 and 228 and the western 10' of lot 229) appears in the deed books precisely two times. First, when the Magsam (or possibly Magason, it's recorded under both names) brothers bought the damned things. That was in July, 1915.
The second appearance was in 1917 when at least one of the lots was leased (NOT SOLD) to Leslie Seylar:
There are no other transfers from the Magsams or Magasons or whatever their actual names are to anyone else in the deed records of Franklin County. There are no wills recorded for the Magsams or Magasons in Franklin County. These pieces of ground just fall off the planet. Hunh. Also, the current GIS tax map (which is doing the Very Best It Can with absolutely shit deed descriptions) does not show any taxable land at all for these alleged lots.
Our second problematic tract, the west 20' of Lot 229 and the east 25' of Lot 230, appears a bit more often in the historical record, even POST-WWI. This tract probably has an actual owner, though who that might be at the moment is a bit iffy.
The 229/230 tract was bought by Percy Smith from The Tuscarora Company.
Percy Smith died but Strite and Widow-of-Percy Dottie Smith sold the land to Rouzer in 1942, helpfully after the invention of the typewriter so that you youngsters in the lexience do not have to read cursive.
Rouzer, something of a Man with a Plan, bought up some other lots on top of the mountain and then, in 1972, issued a deed FROM himself TO himself consolidating this piece and some other pieces he'd acquired. (This is not, in and of itself, a shady thing. It's pretty normal to consolidate various pieces into a single deed.)
However, when Rouzer did it... there was some definite shady going on.
Read that description again. Notice anything missing?
Hint: Where is tract 229/230 that was enumerated in the Strite/Smith to Rouzer deed?
Notice anything EXTRA?
Hint: Lot 3 was not ever owned by Rouzer and I know this because *we* owned Lot 3 and deeded it in 2009 to a Mr. William Lowe who currently owns it.
Hint: Lot E never belonged to Rouzer. I know this because, again, WE own it right now (along with lots F, G, H, and I on the original 1915 drawing) and WE are in the process of selling it to Mr. Mark Eigenbrode. Rouzer's deed probably really means Lot D, here, because in the transfer from Rouzer to Gipe Family Trust (see below) he lists a Lot D.
Having allegedly consolidated stuff, then in 2001, Rouzer sold land to the Gipe Family Trust, to wit:
We can see here that "Lot E" has been rectified to read "Lot D"... but Lots 229/230 are still missing and the Not Owned By Rouzer Lot 3 is included.
The Gipe Family Trust sold the "same piece of ground" in 2013 to Massa, who currently owns it.
I don't think Massa has any idea about the Lot 229/230 tract or about their lack of ownership of Lot 3. But this is not my problem. We're just now getting to my problem.
My problem is that in 1993, my dad made an Agreement of Sale to Mr. Eigenbrode to sell him the remainder of the land that we owned in Peters Township, Franklin County on or near the top of Tuscarora Mountain. It more-or-less looked like this:
(The part we were selling is labeled "residue", well, that part LESS A SMALL NOTCH out of the upper left corner of that piece (the Rouzer tract of Lot 229/230 fame) is what we are actually conveying.)
Here's that piece, more or less, overlaid in red on the 1915 crappy drawing:
When Dad did the agreement of sale, the property description that we had was... not great. Recall, we started with the TREE-BASED description from Sid Leech in 1969. Later, we transferred the section in Peters Township to a different company that we still owned and at that time, the description looked like this:
That's still not a great description, there.
By the time Mr. Eigenbrode got his agreement of sale paid off, which was like this month, the Franklin County Recorder of Deeds had started to, y'know, PLOT the descriptions to verify that they formed CLOSED POLYGONAL SHAPES that could actually represent a piece of ground.
We found this out by giving Mr. Eigenbrode a deed using the property description from the 1993 Agreement of Sale, which was... less than ideal. I suspect it probably described the piece of ground we intended to sell Mr. Eigenbrode and also described the piece of ground that Mr. Eigenbrode intended to buy, so good try, but it... did not pass muster with the Recorder of Deeds' newfangled expectation that property descriptions have actual dimensions and actual bearings and form closed polygonal shapes and stuff.
The stupid descriptions we'd been doing heretofore were not super useful. Also, neither of our two descriptions (the one from Leech to us and the one we had in the transfer from Company A to Company B of us) was particularly plottable or really closed, so I get that the Recorder of Deeds had a valid beef there. But, Mr. Eigenbrode, having at long last paid off the Agreement of Sale here recently, needed a legit deed. He really needed a legit deed because he had ALREADY SOLD the piece of ground to someone else and that person, the NEW GUY, wanted a deed. Naturally. As one does. I mean, none of this is unreasonable. (Yet.)
Then Mr. Eigenbrode asked me to generate a deed from US directly to NEW GUY, as if we'd just sold it to NEW GUY directly for the amount of the sale with Eigenbrode, leaving him whole and entire out of the picture.
Er, no.
Mr. Eigenbrode said The taxes will get paid. I don't see why you are not going along with this. What's it to you?
Mr. Eigenbrode bought the property for about 24K. That's what he pays transfer tax on if we give a deed to him.
Mr. Eigenbrode SOLD the property for close to 100K. That's what NEW GUY should pay transfer taxes on.
If I give a deed directly from us to NEW GUY, then NEW GUY pays transfer tax on a "purchase price" of 24K, which in no way reflects reality and the county doesn't get ANYTHING on the ~100K that Mr. Eigenbrode sold it for to NEW GUY.
Also Mr. Eigenbrode then shows NO CAPITAL GAIN on the sale of land that he "never owned" despite netting a capital gain of like 80K.
No. Not gonna be a party to that sort of tax evasive shit. We don't play like that 'round here.
Mr. Eigenbrode, by his own description, is a godly and religious man, like he goes around casually asking random strangers iffn they're Right With Christ and have Accepted Jesus As Their Lord And Savior but apparently he ain't feeling the Matthew 22:21 even though it's written in red and errything.
(I did not point out his hypocrisy during the phone conversation that ended when he hung up on me after I denied him the third time on the "Can't you just write the deed for the NEW GUY?" issue. It is not useful or productive to point out the hypocrisy of religious folks, only makes them angry.)
So anyway, I had to generate a deed description for Mr. Eigenbrode that would pass the *sigh* reasonable and legitimate sniff test of the Franklin County Recorder of Deeds... ideally without having to pay a surveyor and/or an attorney.
Finally, after about two hundred dollars worth of online deed research, I have managed to do that.
Fortunately for me, almost all of the bordering tracts of this piece of property have been surveyed and/or sold since the year 2000. They all have legit deeds that close and that have good property line descriptions with realistic bearings and distances. The only stupid piece left is that 229/230 thing in the 1942 Rouzer deed that evaporated in the 1972 Rouzer-to-Rouzer deed. (Nobody has done squat with the 227/228/eastern half of 229 since the year 1915 and nobody has paid taxes on it and I think it's just... missing? Anyway, it's to the WEST of the Rouzer tract, nearly vertical, and does not matter for the purposes of generating a deed for Mr. Eigenbrode. It's just delightfully illustrative of the problems inherent in the properties on top of the mountain.) Mr. Eigenbrode is only buying the stuff EAST of the Rouzer tract so we can ignore the 227/228 issue in generating a deed for him.
Here is what the GIS map shows (their lines are yellow and their picture is not-really-very-accurate), I have annotated it with the owners of the tracts plus also the lines as they probably should be.
The Binkley tract is recorded in both Fulton and Franklin counties (The county line is on top of the mountain because of course it is.) and it is taxed in Fulton (much cheaper) county so it doesn't appear on the Franklin County GIS map. The Fulton County GIS map has a totally incorrect drawing of the Binkley tract but again, that is not my problem. My drawing of the Binkley tract matches the survey done for the conveying of the Harnish tract in 2021 (the "residue" picture shows Binkley's property line because it is one of the borders of the Harnish tract).
Here's what I sent over to Eigenbrode as a description:
Beginning at the Northeast corner of the lands south of US Route 30 now or formerly of Alex Rouzer, said lands BEING “The east 20 feet of lot 229 and the west 25 feet of lot 230 on the plot of lots known as Tuscarora Heights recorded in Book 178 Page 195 in the Recorder’s Office of Franklin County”, recorded to Rouzer as Tract 1 in Book 312 p. 114 in the Recorder’s Office of Franklin County;
thence following the centerline of the US Route 30 right-of-way in a northeasterly direction to a point on the corner of lands now or formerly known as Tract 2 of Dezso and Mettille (Franklin County 2016, Instrument 201609799), an approximate bearing of North 66 degrees 75 minutes East and an approximate distance of 2665 feet as measured IN A STRAIGHT LINE though the property itself follows the centerline of the right of way of US Route 30;
thence bearing South 00 degrees 41 minutes 39 seconds East for a distance of 156.40 feet along the lands of Dezso and Metille to an iron pipe marking the corner of lands now or formerly of Billy G. Dinsmore and Florence V. Dinsmore (Franklin County 2007, Book 3654 p 194);
thence due South along lands of Dinsmore a distance of 633.84 feet to a point or pin at the corner of lands now or formerly of Randy L. and Tinna M. Davis (Franklin County 2018, Instrument# 201807458);
thence South 68 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds West along the lands of Davis a distance of 876.58 feet to a point at the corner of lands now or formerly of GV Properties LLC (Franklin County 2004, Book 2651 p. 118);
thence continuing the same South 68 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds West along the lands of GV Properties LLC a distance of 1976.39 feet to a 1” rebar on the corner of lands now or formerly of Travis Harnish (Franklin County 2021, Instrument #202134642);
thence North 35 degrees 39 minutes 4 seconds East 367.42 feet along the lands of Harnish to a 1” rebar;
thence in a northerly direction along the lands now or formerly of Binkley (2006, Franklin County Book 3160 p. 259 AND ALSO Fulton County Book 462 p 215) for a distance of 402.43 feet to the southwest corner of the aforementioned lands now or formerly of Rouzer;
thence North 62 degrees 54 minutes East 45 feet along the southern border of the lands of Rouzer to the southeast corner of said lands;
thence North 27 degrees 45 minutes West 150 feet along the eastern border of the lands of Rouzer to the place of BEGINNING, the tract measuring forty-two acres, more or less, and being the remaining portion of the lands of Valley-Hi Development Association Inc. situate in Peters Township, Franklin County that were acquired by deed dated December 1, 1973 from Lawther Manor, Inc. and recorded in Fulton County Deed Book 079 Page 416.
This is significantly more-involved than most property descriptions (I have read rather a lot of them over the last two weeks) but I feel like the people at the Recorder of Deeds might be happier with more detail.
Update (I waited to post this narrative until I had the how it came out part for you), It Was Recorded!
And now my tale is done. :) I am mostly done with the bullshit piece of ground that we bought in 1969 on top of Tuscarora Mountain. MOSTLY done. There are a few things, like for example the pieces of ground that are basically underneath the Geesaman tract and also the fact that Fulton County thinks we own land yet still in Ayr Township (we do not), but those are problems for another day.
