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Great Grandpa Kolb, The Wooded Strips and the French Survey
I have mentioned the French Survey and how it affected some areas where the English and French surveys met. In the area where I grew up along the Patoka River the Militia Donation done by French survey points meets the English survey. I mentioned earlier that this made for some odd shaped parcels of property and some disagreements about property lines. In at least one case there was some “lost ground” where no one could really identify where the property was or who owned it. This was near the Moore’s Bridge area across the road from our daughter and son in-law Jill and Mathew Embree’s home. I have heard my father and uncles talk about this” lost ground”, but no one seems to care exactly where or how much it is.
My Great Grandpa Kolb was always an industrious man who had five sons and several daughters, he was always looking for projects to keep the boys busy and the family fed.
It was common in those days that if parents died the property was divided evenly among the children. Often a field or tract of land was divided into strips long and narrow. There was just such a place near my Grandpa Kolb’s home and it had a large wooded area that stretched about ¼ mile down the Patoka River about and 500 yards or more west of the river. Grandpa was able to buy these strips from the heirs for a reasonable price. He and his sons went to work cutting the timber and selling it either as logs or taking the logs to the sawmill to be cut into boards and sold as lumber.
I’m sure it took a few years to log all of the timber, but when the logging was finished my Great Grandpa did an unusual thing, he gave the property back to the original owners.