PERCHES: We couldn’t believe the response we got from Monday’s inquiry about the word “porches.”

As many of you contacted to let us know, “porches” was probably a misspelling of “perches” — an old English unit of measurement that is equivalent to a “rod” or a “pole.”

A perch is also equal to:

• 16 ½ feet

• one fourth of a chain (equal to 66 feet)

• 25 links (equal to 7.92 inches)

“The convenience of using ‘chains’ to measure land area is that for square or rectangular properties, multiplying length in chains times width in chains, and dividing that number by 10 gives the area in acres, i.e., 10 square chains is exactly one acre, or 43,560 square feet,” Tom Frair of Marshburg tells us.

“There are 100 ‘links’ in a chain, so that linear measurement can be made in hundredths of a chain,” he said. Tom notes there are 100 links in a chain, and 80 linear chains is exactly 5,280 feet — one mile.

“Many streets and roads, especially in the northeast, were originally designated rights-of-way widths in ‘rods,’” said Tom. “When municipalities were first being designed in the 18th century (or earlier), streets and roads were commonly assigned a legal width of two, three, or four ‘rods,’ meaning they were 33 feet, 49.5 feet, or 66 feet wide, respectively. I know of several Towns in New York State that still have streets named ‘Two Rod Road’ or ‘Three Rod Road.”

Another readers wrote, “In times long past surveyors actually carried wooden rods that were 16.5 feet long and measure the length of boundaries with them.”

Bradford area resident Carl Milks found information saying “the perfect acre” is considered to be “a rectangular area of 43,560 square feet, bounded by sides of length 660 feet and 66 feet (220 yards and 22 yards) or, equivalently, 40 rods and 4 rods. An acre is therefore 160 square rods.”

Carl also found that the word perch is derived from the ancient Roman unit called a pertica.