3 Cranch 394 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of District of Columbia | 1828
after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the Comt («ero. con.)
These sales are all admitted to have been correctly made; and the question is whether they are a bar to the plaintiff’s right of dower.
In both the tax sales the property was advertised as the property of Samuel Blodget’s heirs, and sold as such.
The sale made to the defendant by the trustee, on the 14th of October, 1816, was not ratified by the Court until June 3d, 1818.
The sale for the county tax was made under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1801, § 4, [2 Stat at Large, 115,] which gives the Levy Court the same power and means to collect taxes which, by the laws of Maryland then in force, were given to the levy courts, or county commissioners, in Maryland. By the Maryland law of 1797, c. 90, so much of the lands charged for the payment of county taxes may be sold by the collector as may be sufficient to discharge the taxes due thereon, if he can find no personal property in the county liable for the same.
Neither the Act of Congress nor the Act of Maryland says that the purchaser shall hold the property free from all incum-brance. He would acquire, one would think, nothing more than the right, of the United States and of their debtor. The Act of Congress says that the tax shall be a lien on the lands of the individual who may be assessed for the same; and no land is liable to be sold but the land upon which the tax is a lien. • The land of A. cannot be sold if assessed to B. If it be sold as B.’s land, nothing but B.’s title passes.
So in Maryland, the land cannot be sold if personal property of the person, in whose name the land is assessed, can be found in the bounty. If no such*personal property be found, then the land is sold as the land of the person in whose name it is assessed ; and nothing but his title passes by the sale.
But the ease of a widow whose dower has never been assigned is still stronger. No act of the husband or of his heirs could deprive her of her right; yet she has no estate in the land until actual assignment of her dower. Jackson v. Vanderheyden, 17 Johns. 167. It is an incumbrance upon the land into whose hands soever it may pass, but she is not seized, and has no right to enter. If land be sold under a decree in chancery in a case in which the widow is not a party, or under a judgment against