Missing: Lot 38

IPSWICH -- Michael Kosinski remembers as a teenager driving with his father to look at 2 acres of land his family had purchased west of town. His memories of that trip include turning off at the Clam Box restaurant on High Street and a road covered with shells.

Today, 35 years later, Kosinski is again looking for that land, but this time no one knows where to find it. His father and mother have both passed away, and the town of Ipswich, which once owned the land and has been collecting taxes on it for the past 50 years, can't locate it.

''The lot exists," said Frank Ragonese, the Ipswich tax assessor. ''It just can't be pinpointed."

How does a 2-acre parcel of land just disappear?

''It happens less and less as land gets developed, but it's not all that unusual either," said Jon S. Davis, a real estate lawyer with Stanton & Davis in Marshfield.

Title researchers say land boundaries in the 1800s used to be identified by stone walls, creeks, or the names of adjacent property owners, but over time these reference points move away or disappear, and property lines become fuzzy or nonexistent. Davis said he is working on a case now in Middleborough where two people have deeds written so vaguely that they appear to give both individuals ownership of the same piece of land.

Kosinski's deed describes his property as a parcel of woodland in the ''Muddy River Woods" with boundaries defined only by the names of adjacent property owners who date from the 1800s. The land appears to have no road access and may have little value, although a real estate agent is trying to assemble similar parcels in the area for development.

The town of Ipswich mailed the Kosinskis tax bills that seemed to indicate officials knew where the property was located. The bills, totaling just $16 a year, identified the property as Lot 38 on Tax Map 13. But there is no Lot 38 on the map, which inexplicably skips from Lot 37 to Lot 39. Town officials say Lot 38 doesn't show up on any of the maps they have dating to 1977. Older maps apparently were discarded.

Kosinski, who works as a landscaper in St. Petersburg, Fla., believes the town should tell him where his land is or give him 2 acres of town-owned property in the same area. He says the town effectively lost the land.

''You would assume the town of Ipswich wouldn't sell something unless they knew where it was," he said.

But Ragonese, while sympathetic to Kosinski's position, said it's not the town's responsibility. ''As the owner of the property, he should be telling us where it is," he said.

The town owned the lost property around 1950. Records show the town seized the land for nonpayment of taxes in 1948 and then sold it at a tax auction to Leonard Coffill of Peabody seven years later. Coffill sold it to Kosinski's father in 1956.

Coffill, 79, said he bought the property on a lark, paying less than $50 at the tax auction. He said he went out to look at the land after buying it, but doesn't remember much. Like Kosinski, he recalls it being near the Clam Box restaurant and he remembers a road covered with shells.

He drove back to the area recently and had a hard time getting his bearings. He suspects the 2 acres have been absorbed into someone else's property.

''It's just a mystery," Coffill said. ''If 2 acres were lost, they were probably lost for a reason."

The logical next step in a situation like this would be to hire a title researcher to locate the property, but the deed is so vague that Kosinski could spend $5,000 to $10,000 and still not find out where the land is.

''It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack," said Kim Arena, assistant registrar at the Essex South Registry of Deeds in Salem, where Ipswich land records are kept.

It's unclear whether Kosinski's land is worth the effort. A single parcel without road access in the area would have little value, but real estate agent Deb Cool of Billerica thinks the Muddy River Woods has potential. She is currently working with several landowners in the area who own land-locked parcels, trying to pair them with a landowner with road access to put together a development deal.

Maps of the area show a Muddy River, sometimes called the Muddy Run. Today there is little evidence of a river or even a creek. Historically, it was an area that wealthy landowners in town would use to harvest wood for their fires.

The Clam Box restaurant, which both Kosinski and Coffill remember from their trips to the property, is on the south side of High Street. On the north side is Paradise Road, which leads up toward the Muddy River area. It meanders past a gravel pit and then deadends at an overgrown dirt road covered partly by shells.

The dirt road connects with Mitchell Road and has a trail off of it leading through woods to railroad tracks that bisect the area. The land is undeveloped, marshy in places, and very buggy.

Kosinski's property is difficult to find because the deed provides no reference points, just the names of four adjacent property owners -- Aaron Ross, John Wise, Andrew Russell, and a man identified only by his last name, Mitchell. Registry records indicate the four men were major landowners in the area in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Trying to locate Kosinski's property by tracking an adjacent property is very difficult. The Globe found several parcels of land owned by Aaron P. Ross in the Muddy River area, but only one parcel had a deed that seemed to link up with Kosinski's property. It referred to a 2.5-acre woodland lot at Muddy River and listed as one of its abutters Daniel Haskell, who owned the Kosinski property in the early 1800s.

The Globe traced the owners of the Ross property through deed transfers from the early 1800s forward, but the trail went cold in 1908 with an owner named Mary F. Ross of Ipswich.

At the Globe's request, Arena, the assistant registrar, scoured Registry deeds and probate records and found evidence the property may have been seized and sold by a sheriff. It's not clear if it's the same property because the description differs in significant respects, but Arena is convinced that with enough research the abutters to Kosinski's property could eventually be tracked down and his land pinpointed.

''Properties just don't disappear," Arena said. ''If you're willing to spend enough time and you have the right skills, you'll eventually be able to gather enough evidence to find them."

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.