236 TITLES 



by copies of all the papers examined in working up the case and 

 maps which show not only the present boundaries of the tract 

 but also the lots and grants of which it is composed. 



Anyone who has followed the discussion of titles so far must 

 have been impressed with the great amount of local knowledge 

 required. For this reason it is better to employ local attorneys 

 and surveyors where they can be trusted to do the work with 

 sufficient accuracy. Unfortunately, however, they are too often 

 poorly trained so that a more skilled man must be employed to 

 superintend their efforts. But local knowledge of the families, 

 grants, lot lines and topography must be secured at whatever 

 cost. The Federal Government has adopted the practice of secur- 

 ing trained men by a civil service examination and then sending 

 them directly out into the field to acquire local color. 



By all odds the most difficult titles to investigate are those of 

 lands lying in the thirteen original states. Not only are these 

 states older so that there have been a greater number of property 

 transfers but, worst of all, the land subdivisions are poorly 

 marked. Where the section a mile square is the unit and the 

 land is divided ir^to townships the process of description and 

 identification is very much simplified. Compare, for example, 

 the process of finding the S W i Sec i5,Ti4NRi6W, Montana 

 Principal Meridian, with a tract 160 acres in extent and forming 

 a part of a grant whose initial point established 100 years ago is 

 a stake and stones on a ridge between two obscure creeks. For- 

 tunately, even some of the original thirteen states adopted a 

 lot system. This helps immensely even tho there may be no 

 uniformity between states or parts of the same state as to the 

 size of the lots and the direction of their boundary lines. But 

 where the state land departments adopted a policy of selling any 

 sized grant to any purchaser and put entirely upon him the bur- 

 den of finding out whether there was any such unclaimed land, 

 inextricable confusion arose. As has already been pointed out 

 the land grants in certain parts of North Carolina are two or 

 three deep. A man may have purchased a patent to 10,000 

 acres but be unable to find more than 500 after all the prior 

 patents are taken out. In general it may be said that land identi- 



