Ingalls v. Newhall

• Decision Date: 14 May 1885
• Citation: 30 N.E. 96,139 Mass. 268
• Parties: INGALLS v. NEWHALL.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

139 Mass. 268

30 N.E. 96

INGALLS

v.NEWHALL.¹

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

May 14, 1885.

Report from superior court, Essex county; ALDRICH, Judge.

Writ of entry by Joseph A. Ingalls against Cora I. Newhall to recover a parcel of land in Lynn. The judge directed a verdict for the demandant, and reported the case for the consideration of the supreme judicial court. Judgment for demandant for four-fifths of the demanded premises.

D.E. Ware, for tenant.

W. Gaston and C.L.B. Whitney, for demandant.

DEVENS, J.

John Ingalls, whose will was admitted to probate in 1848, died seised of two tracts of land, one on the northerly and the other on the southerly side of Humphrey street. He devised the same, with his other real estate, to his five sons. On June 14, 1849, the tract on the northerly side was divided by mutual deeds into four parts, one each to three of the sons of John Ingalls, namely, Ephraim, Joseph, and Otis Ingalls, and one to the heirs of his son Benjamin, who died after his father. The fifth son, Jonathan B., while he participated in this division, received no part of the land thus divided. The case affords no evidence that there was any division of the land lying on the southerly side of Humphrey street. In this action the demandant claims seisin and possession of the whole of the last-named tract. The tenant claims title in severalty to certain small described parcels, through the adverse possession, for more than 20 years, of herself and her predecessors in title, or under lost deeds; and in the whole of the locus she claims to hold one-fifth as tenant in common with the demandant.

In dealing with the questions thus presented, it will be more convenient first to determine whether the tenant has title to one undivided fifth of the demanded premises. She is the sole heir of Ephraim A. Ingalls, who died in 1882, and to whom Joseph Ingalls, in 1863, devised all his real estate. It is not disputed that the tenant now holds one undivided fifth in the demanded premises, unless the same was included in a deed made in 1875, by Ephraim A. Ingalls. In this deed Ephraim A. and four others, “the same being, with the grantees in this deed, all the heirs at law of Ephraim Ingalls,” released and quitclaimed to the demandant and two others a lot of land on the northerly side of Humphrey street, and having a frontage of 78 feet on that street, describing it by metes and bounds, “being the same premises conveyed to said Ephraim Ingalls by Otis Ingalls and others, by deed dated June 14, 1849, *** together with all our right, title, and interest in the land between said lot and the sea, lying on the southerly side of said Humphrey street. The said Ephraim Ingalls died seised of said estate.” At the time when this deed was made, all the title or rights under which have since been acquired by the demandant, Ephraim A. Ingalls held in the locus one-fifth, or eight-fortieths, as devisee of Joseph Ingalls, and one-fortieth as one of his father's eight heirs. He had also such rights, if any, as Joseph might have acquired to the parcels claimed by the tenant in severalty.

The demandant contends that all the right and title which Ephraim A. then had in this locus, whether to the several parcels or to the undivided portion devised to him by Joseph, passed by this deed. This is to give to the deed much too broad a construction. Its whole frame shows that it was intended to convey the tract on the northerly side of Humphrey street, together with the share and interest which the grantors had in the tract upon the south side, which they derived from their father, Ephraim, as his heirs. If this intention is fairly shown, too much stress should not be laid upon particular words or expressions, which, but for this, might import a different purpose. The grantors describe themselves as being with the grantees “all the heirs at law of Ephraim Ingalls,” refer to a division made between him and his brothers, the sons of John Ingalls, and convey the tract set off to their father thereby, and then their right, title, and interest in the land on the southerly side of the street. This must mean their “right, title, and interest” therein as the heirs of their father. Even if these are apt words to convey the fractional interest which each heir had individually in the land on the southerly side of the street, it cannot be held that the phrase was intended to describe distinct shares held by individual heirs on entirely distinct titles. Admitting that, if Ephraim A. had been the sole grantor, and had used the words “my right, title, and interest,” they would have conveyed his entire right, no matter how held or from what source it proceeded, it would not then have appeared that the grantors were seeking to convey that in which they had a mutual interest as descendants from a common ancestor, which is shown by the deed in question. The declaration in the deed that “Ephraim Ingalls died seised of said estate,” whether it is to be limited to the tract which had been distinctly defined, or to be extended to the share which the grantors had, as heirs of their father, in the tract lying south of Humphrey street, cannot be treated as a declaration of seisin of any land not included within the description before given, or extended to a declaration of seisin of an estate which one of the heirs held by an independent title. It excludes the idea that there was any intent to convey such an estate if it existed. Nor is the deed an attempt, as suggested in argument, to convey an undivided...