Doris Christian <dmkchristian@austin.rr.com> wrote: >In the 1700's and a little later depending on the state; land was   >"processioned" by the Church of England on a yearly basis (for the C   >of E it was a way of deciding taxation on tithings)  what they did was   >take the land holders on each side of the boundary line and walk the   >boundary with the two landholders agreeing on where the line was.   >This was their way of "surveying" the land.  And, if there was a   >dispute, it was surveyed with the land owners having to pay for the   >survey. ______________ I'm unaware of any procession records in Maryland. The Land Commissions were the result of a petition made by an owner of property whose boundaries had come into question, usually by decay of ancient witness trees, and the death of the directly involved parties. Responsible commissioners were appointed by the county court, and various locals, often ancient "long standers" would depose on what they knew of the matter, recalling circumstances from decades past. Then a resurvey was done, paid for by the petitioner. A revised patent might or might not ensue, but the findings (as I intimated in my previous) ended up in the corpus of knowledge then accessible to the County Surveyor, and used for subsequent area cartographic fiddling. All the uncertainties in this, and loss of such details over the years, continue to make boundary determination a matter of equity court judgments down to the present. John