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‘TO HAVE AND TO HOLD” the land —
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‘TO HAVE AND TO HOLD” the land —
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Stop the Storm 
Your folks patent is online at:
http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/PatentSearch/Default.asp?
I found it and you can print it or order a copy.
Thank you Coleen! I went over there and didn’t find it. There would have been two — one for the first 120 acres August 1963 and the other for the last 40 in I believe September 1965.
That was a sad story, and not one that’s described in Mildred’s existing letters or writings, but I do remember.
My father was a civil engineer, and a professional surveyor. I didn’t know, and was fascinated to read in Mildred’s April 1958 letters how Bill (William) found our land in the first place — and only due to his being able to read a government map and survey things out.
In other words, he knew what he was doing. When he cleared the fields he had no heart to destroy beautiful big trees, so accounted for the ground they took including a respectable circle around their perimeter. He then deducted that ground from the area of the fields and added it onto their edges. Carefully, professionally and accurately.
The land office dragged and dragged their feet before they came to inspect the fields, and then came in the dead of winter with deep snow everywhere and could not possibly FIND the exact edges of the clearings and so deducted five acres from their span and docked my parents forty acres on the patent.
My dad had to clear another five acres, very sadly and with great difficulty as there was no level ground left. He had to take out stands of aging trees and clear steep mountainside. But he did it.
It seems strange to me to not find any written words about this process among my mother’s collection of papers, but then there are certainly large missing segments of time. Also, I suspect that something this important was probably communicated to my grandmother via telephone – and hence may not have been recorded at all.
Thank you for finding the patents – you must have a gift for such! Wonder why it didn’t bring it up at the link for me? I’d love to have one.