Young v. Duvall

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: HARLAN
• Citation: Young v. Duvall, 109 U.S. 573, 3 S.Ct. 414, 27 L.Ed. 1036 (1883)
• Decision Date: 17 December 1883
• Parties: YOUNG v. DUVALL and another

109 U.S. 573

3 S.Ct. 414

27 L.Ed. 1036

YOUNG v. DUVALL and another.

December 17, 1883.

[Syllabus from page 5773 omitted]

[Statement of Case from 574 intentionally omitted]

Enoch Totten and F. W. Jones, for appellant.

Jos. H. Bradley and A. B. Duvall, for appellees.

HARLAN, J.

It is provided by the Revised Statutes of the United States, relating to the District of Columbia, that 'when any married woman shall be a party executing a deed for the conveyance of real estate or interest therein, and shall only be relinquishing her right of dower, or when she shall be a party with her husband to any deed, it shall be the duty of the officer authorized to take acknowledgments, before whom she may appear, to examine her privily and apart from her husband, and to explain to her the deed fully;' further, 'if upon such privy examination and explanation, she shall acknowledge the deed to be her act and deed, and shall declare that she had willingly signed, sealed, and delivered the same, and that she wished not to retract it, the officer shall certify such examination, acknowledgment, and declaration, by a certificate annexed to the deed, and under his hand and seal,' to the effect indicated in the form prescribed by the statute. Rev. St. D. C. § 450. It is also provided that 'when a privy examination, acknowledgment, and declaration of a married woman is taken and certified and delivered to the recorder of deeds for record, in accordance with the provisions of this [the fourteenth] chapter, the deed shall be as effectual in law as if she had been an unmarried woman; but no covenant contained in this deed shall in any manner operate upon her or her heirs, further than to convey effectually her right of dower or other interest in the real estate which she may have at the date of the deed.' Id. § 452.

These statutory provisions being in force, there was placed upon record in the proper office in the District of Columbia, on the seventeenth day of November, 1875, a deed of trust purporting to have been executed by Mark Young and Virginia Young, his wife, and to have been, on the same day, acknowledged before B. W. Ferguson, a justice of the peace in and for the District of Columbia. The certificate of that officer, under his hand and seal, shows that the grantors were personally known to him to be the persons who executed the deed; that they personally appeared before him, in this district, 'and acknowledged the same to be their act and deed; and the said Virginia Young, wife of said Mark Young, being by me [him] examined privily and apart from her husband, and having the deed aforesaid fully explained to her, acknowledged the same to be her act and deed, and declared that she had willingly signed, sealed, and delivered the same, and that she wished not to retract it.' This deed of trust conveyed certain real estate in the city of Washington, the property of Mrs. Young, to the appellees, Duvall and Holtzman, in trust to secure the payment of a note executed by the grantors, whereby they promised to pay to the order of John Little, two years after date, at the National Metropolitan Bank, the sum of $8,000, with interest at the rate of 10 per cent. until paid. Neither Little nor the present holder of the note had...