92 Iowa 79 | Iowa | 1894
I. Plaintiff claims to be the owner in fee of the southeast one fourth of the southwest one fourth of section 12, township 70, range 3, and avers that defendant claims to be the owner of the south fifty acres of the west one half of the southeast one fourth of the same section, which land adjoins plaintiff’s on the east; that defendant has occupied a strip off of the east part of plaintiff’s premises, about thirty or forty rods long north and south, and varying from a few feet to several rods in width from the northeast corner of plaintiff’s premises southerly, and that defendant refuses to yield possession thereof to plaintiff. Judgment is asked for immediate possession of said ground. Defendant answered in denial, and, by amendment, sets out his claim of ownership to the land occupied by him. At the close of plaintiff’s. testimony, defendant moved the court to direct a verdict for him, which was done, and judgment was entered thereon. To this action of the court, as well as to certain rulings excluding testimony offered by plaintiff, he excepted and appeals.
II. Since this cause was docketed in this court, appellant, Jessie Y. Gerke, has died, and by stipulation on file it is agreed that August Gerke, as executor of the last will and testament of said deceased, Medard Hurst, and Edward Gustave Gerke, minor, by August Gerke, his father and his next .friend, shall be substituted as plaintiffs, and the cause proceed to a final determination. It is therefore ordered that said parties be substituted as parties plaintiff in lieu of Jessie Y. Gerke, deceased.
IY. The contention between the parties to this action is as to the proper and legal method of establishing the center of a section of land. The section in controversy was surveyed and disposed of by the general government without establishing the center of the section. Plaintiff claims that the correct method to find the center of a section is to run a line from the quarter corner on the east to the quarter corner on the west side of the section, or vice versa, and the point halfway on said line between said quarter corners is the center. This is known among surveyors as the “bisecting method.” Defendant claims that, wherever the rectangular system of surveying prevails the only method of establishing the center of a section is by what is known as the “intersecting” method.
ILLUSTRATION 1.
The inclosure between the lines in each case represents section 12, and the points indicated by the letter “0” on each diagram show the center of the section as found by the respective methods heretofore described. Plaintiff introduced testimony to show that in 1840 the then county surveyor of Des Moines county, one Avery, in a survey made, established the center of the section at the point indicated in illustration “1” above. Plaintiff proposed to show that this same method of establishing the center of a section was pursued by Avery in all the surveying he did for the county; that from the earliest surveys made in the county, and until about 1868, the centers of sections were established by the bisecting method, and thus entered upon the county surveyor’s record, and they had always been recognized and approved as true centers of the sections; that this method of establishing the center of a section was as directed by instructions