32 So. 2d 435 | Miss. | 1947
Lead Opinion
On July 4, 1881, S. Gwin, the Auditor of Public Accounts, executed and delivered to A.B. Jones a forfeited tax land patent to the lands here in question, the grant being of the described land as a "tract of land," there being no words of limitation of the estate granted to the effect that it was an unexpired lease, but the grant was to the grantee and "his heirs and assigns forever." It recited that the land "was sold on the 10th day of May 1875 for the taxes due the State." The Auditor was authorized and empowered to execute the patent under the express provisions of Section 566, Code 1880.
According to the allegations of the bill, the grantee under said patent went at once in the exclusive possession and actual occupancy of the land and he and his successors in title, appellant being the ultimate of such successors, have been in the continuous, actual occupancy of said land claiming the fee-simple title thereto for a period of more than sixty years. *709
In order that the forfeited tax-land patent shall have been good to convey a fee-simple title, a title of that grade must have passed out of the state into the hands of a private person before January 1, 1874, else it would not have been assessable and subject to the tax sale as a fee-simple title on May 10, 1875. There is no record that the title had so passed out of the State. In favor, however, of a possession of such a long length of years as is here present, a presumption exists that there was such a grant by the sovereign as will support the title of the persons in actual adverse occupancy and claim of title. Caruth v. Gilespie,
We do not apply that general rule here, however, because of what was said in Leflore County v. Bush,
Reversed and remanded.
Addendum
Counsel suggest error in our conclusion that the presumption — that the patent conveyed a fee simple title — is builded upon another presumption that the State had theretofore parted with such title. It is further urged *710 that such presumptions must include also the fact that after the State had parted with the fee simple title it was validly assessed and sold for unpaid taxes.
In our former opinion, Jones v. State,
We find the several links supporting appellant's chain of title are not forged out of material borrowed from others but are inferences each intrinsically sound. That they are invoked concurrently for a single purpose exhibits no generation of power in an initial presumption to recreate other presumptions invigorated solely by their predecessor. As stated in our former opinion, the fact that the conveyance by the State in 1881 was a full warranty deed sufficiently evidences the extent of title which the State had theretofore acquired.
As stated in Grand Gulf Railroad and Banking Co. v. Bryan, 8 Smedes M.,
Overruled.