Gray Webb and Others, Plaintiffs In Error v. John Den, Lessee of Polly Weatherhead

• Decision Date: 01 December 1854
• Citation: 58 U.S. 576,17 How. 576,15 L.Ed. 35
• Parties: GRAY P. WEBB AND OTHERS, PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. JOHN DEN, LESSEE OF POLLY WEATHERHEAD
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

58 U.S. 576

17 How. 576

15 L.Ed. 35

GRAY P. WEBB AND OTHERS, PLAINTIFFS IN ERROR, v. JOHN DEN, LESSEE OF POLLY WEATHERHEAD.

December Term, 1854

THIS case was brought up, by writ of error, from the circuit court of the United States for the middle district of Tennessee.

The case is stated in the opinion of the court.

It was argued by Mr. Gillet, for the plaintiffs in error; no counsel appearing for the defendant.

Mr. Justice GRIER delivered the opinion of the court.

On the trial of this case, the plaintiff below having shown that the lessor of plaintiff was one of the children of Anthony Bledsoe,—also the will of Anthony Bledsoe, and a grant of five thousand acres of land, by the State of North Carolina, to Nicholas Lang—offered in evidence a copy of a paper writing purporting to be a deed from John J. Lang, Basset Stith, and Mary his wife, and others, devisees of the legal estate, to the 'legatees and devisees of the late Anthony Bledsoe,' for the one fourth part of said tract, or, twelve hundred and fifty acres, by certain metes and bounds. This copy is certified by the register of Maury county, Tennessee, as there recorded on the 11th of January, 1809. The defendants objected to the admission of this copy as evidence, 'because it was not duly proved, acknowledged, or authenticated, so as to entitle the same to registration, and there was no proof of the acknowledgment or privy examination of Mary Stith, the feme covert, and that the registration of said deed being unauthorized, a copy would not be read.' The court overruled the objection, and permitted the deed to be read, and the exception to this ruling is chiefly relied on as a ground for reversing the judgment of the court below.

The acknowledgment certified with this deed, which purports to have been taken in open court, in Halifax county, North Carolina, at November sessions, 1807, is admitted not to have been such as the registration acts then required, nor was it certified under the seal of the court, as required by law. But an act was passed in 1839, by the legislature of Tennessee, the 9th section of which contains the following provision: That whenever a deed has been registered 'twenty years or more, the same shall be presumed to be upon lawful authority, and the probate shall be good and effectual, though the certificate on which the same has been registered has, not been transferred to the register's books, and no matter what has been the form of the certificate of probate or acknowledgment.'

In the early settlement of most of our States, the forms of conveyances of land were very simple; and they were usually drawn either by the parties themselves, or by persons equally ignorant of the proper forms of certificates of acknowledgment required by law.

In some States, the statutes concerning acknowledgments and registry were stringent, while the practice was loose and careless. And, in some, the courts by unnecessary strictness in their construction of the statutes, added to the insecurity of titles, in a county where too many have acted on the supposition that every one who can write is fit for a conveyancer. The great evils likely to arise from a strict construction applied to the bon a fide conveyances of an...