Wow.. I stand corrected, thank you for letting me know🙂

I wonder if the use of lead died out due to environmental effects.

back when they were alive my grandparents burried a 6 foot metal rebar pole with L metal profiles horizontally welded to it as a marker, only 1ft above ground was left.

[removed]

George Washington carved his mark into stone when he surveyed Natural Bridge in Virginia.

This isn't' really true. In both survey systems the markings or pins or corners, etc only have meaning when combined with a legal document. In meets and bounds systems an 'x' carved into a fold of a tree, a burned wooden stake buried at a corner, an x on a rock are not warnings or visible signs of occupation. These are the exact opposite! These are pretty hidden and hard to see and only connect to each other when interpreted and found using a deed or legal document that describes them and their relationship to each other. It's no different in brand new developments today, the survey markers are buried and not meant to be seen. It's not a sign of occupation in any form, it's just a physical claim to land as described in a legal document.

people were saying these were large, 1/2" thick, foot or two wide slabs in the comments. how else would they find them later?

The point of the meets and bound, or later township and ranges, is just to show that it was important that property be visible. You had to have outward signs of occupation. Someone can't be trespassed or ousted if there's no outward sign they were possessing the land tortiously. Part of trespassing is that you are occupying the land in knowing violation of the owner's consent. So, hidden markers would hinder your ability to oust a trespasser.

What's the difference?

Lead does not decay very rapidly. It is also soft, you can scratch words onto it. You don't need much to mark a corner. I don't know about the Oregon Trail, but it was used through the ages.

You are just describing the differences between a meets and bounds system and system of townships and ranges (a projected grid). Meets and bounds are the european and british way of property marking and the township/range grid system is an American invention that is much more efficient! Thank you Mr. Jefferson.

There are field bounderies in England that have been the same since the Iron Age. I love looking at old maps and seeing roads that have been there for 160 years (In the USA that is a long time).

I would think earthquakes would be more problematic.

Survey markers (the caps) are made of brass or aluminum these days, for the most part. Most are aluminum but the higher end ones, like USGS markers, are made of brass.

Yes, OP is aware of that. Read the post. They were manually sorting out and excluding search results where the "lead" in question was the metal, rather than the salient fact in a news piece, and noticed a lot of references to physical burying of lead to mark property boundaries.

This very heavy substance that was used in a variety of manners throughout the home and farm … inside plumbing was sealed with lead, firearms used lead projectiles, fishermen used lead weights, etc. Lead can be easily melted and shaped and imprinted with wording.

Liberia from the US would be an example and Sierra Leone for the former British colonies.

Very good answer

Thanks for this, I forgot about Library of Congress website. Why am I am so interested? I have an old abolitionist book of poetry and stories passed down from my grandparents, and it has many simple stories of the damage done. I'm going to have to dig it up, just for comparison.

I work for a land survey firm in Ontario. It is also a federal offense in Canada.

The Criminal Code of Canada R.S. 1985, c. C-46 under Part XI, Sec. 442 and 443 states, "Every one who wilfully pulls down, defaces, alters or removes anything planted or set up as the boundary line or part of the boundary line of land is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction."

You can find them on the Library of Congress's oral history project too.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

I think this is confusing the journalism term "burying the lead" which can be spelled alternatively as lede and the word lede in the sense of leode, leod, or ledd which referred to the people tied to an allotment of land. You would be given land and lede, meaning the land and the labor of the people who lived there as your vassals. I've cut and pasted the OED entry below. But "Burying the lead/lede" starts showing up in the 1950s if you check it's etymology. Lede in the sense of the vassals and land is an Old English word dating to the 14th century.

Also, I've done a decent amount of reading on law of discovery and the development of property rights and surveying in the US, so this doesn't rule out anywhere else. I've also read a little on the Spanish. I've read a ton of old deeds from pioneer days in the US. I've never seen a buried lead marker and it doesn't really make sense. You want your claim to be visible to others so normally things were nailed to trees, scratched in rocks, or made somehow visible to others. You would do stuff like build a small fort to show that you've put labor into the area, even if you're not actually using it yet. But you wanted to create a visible sign of occupation and boundary to give other's notice.

And if you read old deeds, before a surveyor come come and mark everything off in terms of longitude, latitude, and chain length, they refer to visible landmarks. They'll say stuff like "Eastern boundary is X creek from from the creek branch, south 600 paces to the large oak tree. Southern boundary is from along X creek continuing to fence line of Sanders farm." The important thing again is that the boundaries are visible.

Not having it visible wouldn't help anyone show anything. The other problem is that the ground moves. Depending on where you buried something, how much water goes through the area, and the slope, where you bury stuff is going to move.

b. plural. In the alliterative phrase land and lede, i.e. land and vassals or subjects.

OE Andreas (1932) 1321 Hafast nu þe anum eall getihhad land ond leode.
c1330 Arth. & Merl. 86 And gaue him bothe land and lede To help his childer after his day.
1377 W. Langland Piers Plowman B. xv. 520 When Constantyn..holykirke dowed With londes and ledes lordeshipes and rentes.
?c1475 Sqr. lowe Degre 135 I wyll forsake both land and lede, And become an hermyte.
a1500 (▸?c1400) Sir Triamour (Cambr.) (1937) l. 1269 Y make the myn heyre Of londe and of lede.
a1500 Merchant & Son l. 7 in W. C. Hazlitt Remains Early Pop. Poetry Eng. (1864) I. 133 He was a grete tenement man, and ryche of londe and lede.

Different French expedition, but there was a lead plate buried overlooking the Missouri River at what is now known at the Verendrye Site in South Dakota in 1743. It was discovered during the early part of the 1900s.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Verendrye_Site

Lead was often a by-product of silver/zinc mining. It's also not so difficult to refine.

[deleted]