Town of Enfield v. Town of Ellington

• Decision Date: 15 April 1896
• Citation: 67 Conn. 459,34 A. 818
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: TOWN OF ENFIELD v. TOWN OF ELLINGTON.

34 A. 818

67 Conn. 459

TOWN OF ENFIELD

v. TOWN OF ELLINGTON.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

April 15, 1896.

Appeal from court of common pleas, Hartford county; Walsh, Judge.

Action by the town of Enfield against the town of Ellington. Judgment for defendant and plaintiff appeals. Reversed in part and in part affirmed.

The action was brought to recover for supplies furnished paupers alleged to belong to the defendant town, in the court of common pleas in Hartford county, and tried to the court (Walsh, J.); facts found and judgment rendered for the defendant, and appeal by the plaintiff for alleged errors in rulings upon evidence and in conclusions of fact, in view of the subordinate facts detailed in the finding, and because certain facts were alleged to have been found against the evidence.

Charles H. Briscoe and George B. Fowler, for appellant.

Charles Phelps, for appellee.

BALDWIN, J. It became important during the trial for the plaintiff to prove the date when Leonard E. Madison, who had been a soldier during the Civil War in a Massachusetts regiment was discharged from service. For this purpose a certificate was offered in evidence, dated in 1884, from the adjutant general of Massachusetts, under the seal of his department that this name was borne upon the muster roll of a certain Massachusetts regiment and which gave the date of enlistment and discharge, both being in the year 1865. This paper was properly excluded. It was not a copy of a record, but at most only an unsworn statement of certain of the contents of a record, and would have been inadmissible, even had it been properly authenticated. The finding states that Artemas Bennett resided in Ellington during 1858, 1859, and 1862, and during part of each of the years 1860, 1861, 1863, 1865, 1866, and 1867, and that during some of the years intervening between 1860 and 1868 he voted there; but that he never had the continuous residence in the town for six years which was necessary to give him a settlement. The plaintiff, in order to show that his residence there was continuous for six years, offered in evidence the original official registrar's lists of the electors of the town for 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1864, which were also used as check lists at the April elections in those years. Each of these contained Bennett's name, and it was checked on each to denote that he had voted. The plaintiff also offered, for the same purpose, papers which it claimed to be the official registrar's lists of elections for 1866 and 1867, on which his name also appeared, and had been checked. They were found among the papers of the town, but bore no official attestation or signatures, nor was there any other proof that they were part of the town files or records. The documents thus offered were all excluded. The four original registrar's lists were competent evidence that Bennett was an elector and voted as such for four consecutive years. They were records of those facts, made by public officers in the course of their official duty, under a law which required such lists to be kept on file in the town clerk's office, and carefully preserved. Pub. Acts 1860, p. 39, § 8; Hyde v. Brush, 34 Conn. 454. Neither registry as an elector, nor the exercise as such of the right of suffrage, is conclusive evidence of domicile; but it tends to prove it, and may be shown by record entries. The ruling of the trial court was doubtless based on the case of New Milford v. Sherman, 21 Conn. 101, 112, but the observation there made with respect to a similar question cannot be supported on principle. The finding as to the papers offered as the lists of 1866 and 1867 is not entirely explicit if they were found among the papers of the town, in the town clerk's office, under such circumstances as to indicate that they were the original lists left there on file, they should have been received, although bearing no official signatures or authentication. The omission of the proper attestation renders it less easy to identify the documents, but does not destroy their character as records, when shown to be such by other proof. The same considerations apply to the ruling of the trial court in excluding a book found among the records of the town, which contained an entry, neither dated nor signed, of the admission of Bennett as an elector of the town on April 5, 1858. If this book was an original record, it should have been received in evidence; and in determining whether it was such, its general appearance, the place where it was found, and the length of time during which it was known to have been there, were all matters entitled to weight. If the entries looked as if they had been made by public officials contemporaneously with the facts which they recorded, the book would be supported by the ordinary presumption attaching to ancient documents which have been in existence for 30 years.

None of the...