delivered the opinion of the court.
This is a bill to.quiet title to land in Alabama. It was dismissed by the Circuit. Court, on ■ demurrer and the dеcree was affirmed without further discussion by the Circuit Court of Appeals. 189 Fed. Rep. 205. 199 Fed. Rep. 989. The plaintiffs and appellants-are children of the late General Hood and were adopted in Louisiana in 1880 by George T. McGehee, who bought the property in question in 1886. The defendаnts’ are McGehee’s heirs if the Louisiana adoption does not entitle the plaintiffs to the'Alabama land. The bill sets up that the adoptiоn did entitle them to it by virtue of Article IV, § 1, of the Constitution and the Act of Congress in pursuance of the .same, entitling the Louisiana record to full faith and credit; By the instrument of adoption the McGehee’s 'bind and obligate themselves to support, maintain and educate them [the plaintiffs] as if they were their own children; and hereby invest them with all the rights and benefits of legitimatе children in their éstate ’; and the bill further sets up that the latter clause- cоnstituted a contract with the plaintiffs so to invest them. It alleges servicеs as children to McGehee and also in advance to him of $8,600, being thе plaintiffs’ share of the Hood Relief Fund collected in the Southern Stаtes. Finally a familiar letter of McGehee to the plaintiffs, which has bеen probated as a will in Mississippi where McGehee lived, but is not allеged .to have been admitted to probate in Alabama, is set forth, valeat quantum. It stаtes that, with immaterial exceptions, 'everything else of mine is to be yours equally divided’ and that the letter will be valid as a will.
The alleged -will is relied uрon only as confirming the intent supposed to be expressed by the instrumеnt of adoption and as showing that if the bill is dismissed it should be dismissed without prejudicе. As there seems to be no ground for supposing that it could take effеct on real estate
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in Alabama it may be laid on one side. The other contentions were correctly disposed of by Judge Grubb in an aсcurately reasoned opinion. The Alabama statute of' descents as construed by the Supreme Court of the State excludes children adopted by proceedings in other States.
Brown
v.
Finley,
157 Alabama, 424.
Lingen
v.
Lingen,
45 Alabama, 410. There is no ground upon which we can go behind these decisions, and the law; so сonstrued is valid. The construction does not deny the effective oрeration of the Louisiana proceedings but simply reads the Alabаma statute as saying that whatever may be the status of the plaintiffs, whatever their relation to the deceased by virtue of what has been dоne, the law does not devolve his estate upon them. There is no fаilure to give full credit to the adoption of the plaintiffs, in a provisiоn denying them the right to inherit land in another State. Alábama is sole mistress of the dеvolution of Alabama land by descent.
Olmsted
v.
Olmsted,
The language relied upon as a contract was simply the language of adoption used in the duly authorized notarial act. It had its full effect by constituting the plaintiffs adoрted children under the Louisiana law. It gave them whatever rights the Louisianа law attempted and was competent to give them as such childrеn, and it did not' purport to do more. As matter of supererogation wе may repeat the remark of Judge Grubb that the proceeding gave the children nil that was expected at the time, as it was effectivе in Louisiana and recognized in Mississippi, and that it cannot acquire a greater scope on the strength of a subsequent purchase in Alabama, or from McGehee’s mistaken expectation that the land would descend to them.
Decree affirmed.