Daily AncestorBearing tree
A bearing tree is a tree near a survey corner that the surveyor marked and recorded, with its direction and distance, so the corner could be found again.
Federal surveyors cut prescribed marks into nearby trees at each corner and wrote down their species, size, direction and distance from the corner. If the corner post rotted, the trees let a later surveyor find the spot.
Older instructions also mention witness trees, marked like bearing trees but without the course and distance; later all such trees were treated as bearing trees and the term witness tree dropped out. Because of these records, the old notes also show which trees grew there.
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Daily Ancestor. "Bearing tree." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/legal-land/bearing-tree. Last checked 2026-10-10.