27 S.W. 208 | Tex. App. | 1894
Appellant instituted action of trespass to try title to recover of appellees certain land in the city of El Paso. Appellees answered by general demurrer and plea of not guilty.
In 1858 the Legislature of Texas passed an act relinquishing to certain original grantees in El Paso County certain lands that had been theretofore granted to them by a former government, among the number being "to Juan Maria Ponce de Leon, two caballarias of land called `El Rancho de Ponce,' now known as the town of Franklin." In this act it is provided, that "it shall be the duty of the several claimants to the land named to have the same surveyed by the district or county surveyor of said county, which survey shall in all respects conform to the metes and bounds designated in the original grant, and upon the return of the field notes thereof to the General Land Office, the Commissioner of the General Land Office is hereby authorized and required to have the same platted on the proper map in his office and issue patents for the same in accordance with existing laws."
In speaking of the Ponce grant, Judge Willie, in the case of Clark v. Hills,
Article 14, section 2, of the State Constitution, among other things provides: "That all genuine land certificates heretofore or hereafter issued shall be located, surveyed, or patented only upon vacant and unappropriated public domain, and not upon any land titled or equitably owned under color of title from the sovereignty of the State, evidence *652
of the appropriation of which is on the county record, or in the General Land Office, or when the appropriation is evidenced by the occupation of the owner, or of some person holding for him." Does the Ponce de Leon tract of land fall within the line of "land titled or equitably owned under color of title from the sovereignty of the State?" If so, then the errors assigned become immaterial, the testimony showing that appellant located on the land in 1886, many years after the survey was made under the provisions of the Act of 1858. The patent under the latter survey was not issued until after the institution of the suit, and appellees' title to the land must rest upon the survey made in 1859 by Anson Mills. We gather from a decision rendered by the present Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in the case of Winsor v. O'Connor,
In the same opinion it is said: "It was evidently intended by the section of the Constitution referred to, to prohibit the location of land certificates on land lawfully held by evidence of right inferior to a legal title, as well as to prohibit the location of such certificates on land titled."
But it is insisted that the survey made by Mills was in violation of the Act of 1858, in that the metes and bounds in that survey are not the same as those in the grant made by Mexico to Ponce de Leon. An inspection of the grant does not indicate to us that there is any conflict. The description of the land in the grant, proof of which was rejected, is quite imperfect, and the very object, it would seem, in requiring a survey, was to ascertain the land, title to which was confirmed; for if there had been perfect descriptions of the lands there would have been no necessity to have other surveys. However, there is nothing on the face of the survey that would render it void, and a second locator can not be heard to adduce proof to show that the first *653
survey was void. He is met by the Constitution, and is not allowed to locate on land already surveyed. Niswanger v. Saunders, 1 Wall., 424. In a number of other cases the Supreme Court of the United States has held, that the location or patent of lands covered by patents or surveys are without any standing, although the first patents or survey may be void. Jackson v. Clark, 1 Pet., 638; Galloway v. Finley, 13 Pet., 298; McArthur v. Dun's Heirs, 7 How., 270; Land Association v. Knight,
We are of the opinion that there is no error in the judgment, and it is affirmed.
Affirmed.
NEILL, Associate Justice, did not sit in this case.