Definition
A driftway is a right of way or road over which cattle or other livestock are driven. As a property right, it functions as an easement — a limited, specific use of another's land for the purpose of moving animals from one place to another. It is distinct from a general right of way for carriages or foot travel, and a grant or recognition of a carriage-way does not, by implication, create or include a driftway.
Why It Matters in Research
Driftway is an archaic term with narrow surviving geographic use. Researchers should be aware of several navigational issues when working with historical sources.
First, the term largely disappeared from mainstream American legal usage and is documented as surviving in active use primarily in Rhode Island. Bouvier and Rapalje both flag this explicitly, citing Hilliard on Real Property. If research involves New England property records, early deeds, or Rhode Island conveyancing history, the term may appear in operative legal instruments. Outside that context, appearances in American sources are likely historical or comparative rather than jurisdictionally active.
Second, driftway sits within a cluster of overlapping easement and way terminology — way, drover's road, drift, cattle road, common way — that historical sources use inconsistently. The researcher must examine whether a source is treating driftway as a distinct legal right with specific scope, or as a general descriptive term for any path animals cross. The legal significance turns on the distinction: a formally recognized driftway easement carries defined incidents of use, while casual descriptive references carry none.
Third, the citation to 1 Taunt. 279 appears across all three historical dictionaries and signals the English common law origin of the term's legal contours. That case established the important limitation that a carriage-way does not imply a driftway — meaning these rights do not travel together by implication. Researchers working on easement-by-implication arguments or historical deed interpretation should register this limitation carefully.
Fourth, because driftway is tied to an agricultural economy of open grazing and cattle driving, it appears most densely in 18th and early 19th century sources. As land use patterns shifted toward enclosed farming and then away from livestock driving entirely, the term faded from practice. Researchers using later legal dictionaries may find the term absent or only briefly noted; absence from a later source does not mean it was absent from the jurisdiction's earlier law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's, Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence — converge on an identical core definition: a road or way over which cattle are driven. The agreement is complete and unqualified on this point.
Bouvier adds jurisdictional grounding by noting the term's continued use in Rhode Island and citing Hilliard's Abridgment of the Law of Real Property. Rapalje echoes this jurisdictional note and points to the same Hilliard citation, which provides some independent confirmation of Rhode Island survival. Neither dictionary explains why Rhode Island retained the term when other American jurisdictions apparently did not.
All three dictionaries cite 1 Taunt. 279 for the proposition that a carriage-way does not imply a driftway. Rapalje isolates this as a standalone sub-entry, treating it as a discrete legal point worth indexing separately — useful guidance for researchers who might encounter the question in the context of easement scope disputes.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit: they do not address how driftway interacts with the broader law of easements (creation by grant, prescription, or implication), nor do they describe what activities fall within the scope of a driftway right versus outside it. Researchers needing that level of analysis will need to look past these dictionary entries to the underlying treatise authorities.
Jurisdictional Note
Driftway appears to have retained active legal use in Rhode Island into the 19th century, with both Bouvier and Rapalje citing Hilliard as evidence. In most other American jurisdictions, the term had become archaic by the mid-19th century. English common law is the foundational source for the right's legal definition and scope.