It was a routine meeting and a routine set of appointments, but the West Tisbury selectmen paused when they came to one office that was not so routine: fence viewers. After the death of Daniel Prowten last year the town is down to just two fence viewers and suddenly along with the appointment the question was there to consider: Does the town still need fence viewers?

“If we need them we should have three, if we don’t need them we should have zero,” said selectman Cynthia Mitchell.

“The fact is they really don’t have a job to do anymore,” said town administrator Jennifer Rand, who is looking into whether the town is obligated to retain the position.

For now the fence viewers are safe; the selectmen reappointed Jim Powell and Joan Ames for the year but the episode raised questions about the role in the community of a functionally obsolete office that nonetheless ties the town to its colonial past.

Every town except Oak Bluffs and Aquinnah still appoints fence viewers, who take their place next to other unusual town positions. Chilmark has a moth superintendent; Edgartown has measurers of wood and bark and weighers of coal (who traditionally inspected and verified the cargo of schooners to see if their deliveries were correct). Other traditional positions such as field drivers, pound keepers and Aquinnah’s cranberry agent have gone the way of the heath hen.

Fence viewers are responsible for enforcing the maintenance of fences between properties (especially in the cases of trespassing livestock), preventing the construction of spite fences and mediating border disputes. Fence viewing law allows neighbors to repair neglected fences at double the cost to their owners.

The position was first established in Massachusetts in 1693 by a statute which was amended in 1836. Since 1836 fence viewing legislation has not been the hot button issue it once was. Even a half century ago the Gazette wondered why the position had survived into the 20th century.

“The question is raised every year, following the reports of Island town meetings as to who and what fence viewers may be and what their duties are,” a 1961 article reported.

Ms. Rand said although the position is known mainly for its quaint irrelevance, fence viewers could still play a useful role in the community.

“It’s a service that I actually think would be hugely helpful if people would use them,” she said. “It would be nice if people would actually use fence viewers to solve simple disputes, but that’s not what happens. People get mad and they call a lawyer. There’s no middle step anymore.”

West Tisbury building and zoning inspector Ernie Mendenhall said in more than 20 years he has never relied on the services of his fence viewers to resolve border disputes, but like Ms. Rand, he wishes he had.

“It’s too bad because I actually think it could be a good mediation service,” he said. “I don’t want to see them get rid of them. It’s always nice to have someone in town who can say, I’m the official fence viewer.”

One West Tisbury resident who can say that, along with high school teacher Jim Powell, is Joan Ames.

“I prefer the term fence-sitter,” she laughed.

About the only person who can remember the last live fence-viewing in West Tisbury’s institutional memory is John Alley.

“We did have a case once about 30 years ago in the town where one property owner complained that his neighbor had put up a clothesline on his property and demanded that the fence viewers straighten out the mess,” he recalled. “They walked the property line, looked at old records, things like, ‘the old tree is here, the pile of rocks is over there,’ and they determined that, in fact, the people had put their clothesline on the wrong property.”

The records Mr. Alley refers to are relics from an era before modern surveying when property lines were defined by the pastoral landmarks at their boundaries. The following is a typical fence viewer’s decision taken from 1808 Tisbury town records on a dispute between Abijah Hammett and Bernard Luce, whose properties were divided by a brook:

“The fence shall be set up as follows, Vizt: to begin at the S.E. corner of said Bernard’s fence adjoining the Sd brook, running E. by about two rods across said Brook Northly on the marsh on the east side of sd brook about seven or eight rods thence acrost said brook on the marsh on the West side of said brook about ten rods to a stake standing on the South Side of a Swamp wood bush about three feet from said brook thence N. East on a strait course about Seven rods to a heap of stones . . .”

Such decisions were surprisingly hard to appeal and as the Gazette once wrote without irony: “The fence viewer is a man of broad authority, backed by the courts.”

Chapter 49 of Massachusetts general law, a cobwebbed legislative back corner in the 400-year-old attic of the bay state legal system (likely somewhere near the dusty shoeboxes containing provisions for duels) describes the duties of the position and lays out stern penalties for viewers who fail to take their responsibilities seriously.

“A fence viewer who, when requested, unreasonably neglects to perform any duty required of him in this chapter shall forfeit five dollars to be recovered in tort to the use of the town,” it says in part.

While no one in town argues for the necessity of the position, there is a reluctance among some to cut ties with the largely symbolic office.

“It would be too bad if they got rid of them,” said Mr. Alley. “Just because it’s not used much anymore, I don’t think it should be abolished. It’s just chipping away at these old traditions.”

If the selectmen ultimately decide to preserve the town fence viewer positions, Ms. Mitchell’s concern about restocking the office with three viewers is borne out by tradition.

“The old custom,” a 1976 Gazette story said, is to elect, “A tall one, a short one and a fat one. The first was the supervisor who did the surveying. The short man was holder of the instruments so the surveyor could see over his head. The third fence viewer had to lug the measuring chains and was used by the other two for assurance that the fence was of substantial construction.”

Good fences, as they say, make good neighbors.