fence-viewer

Noun

fence viewer (plural fence viewers)

1. A town or city official who administers fence laws by inspecting new fences and settles disputes arising from trespass by livestock that had escaped enclosure.
   • But what villager could have foreseen that their neighbor was to be commissioner for the government of Massachusetts, church elder, town selectman, judge of small causes, and town deputy to the Massachusetts legislature? The people of Weyhill [in Hampshire, England], who had seen Peter Noyes serve...1963, Sumner Chilton Powell, “Chapter I: The Web of Open-field Life”, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, Wesleyan University Press