104 Pa. 472 | Pa. | 1883
delivered the opinion of the court, January 7th 1884.
In January 1784, John Penn, Jr., and John Penn, late proprietaries of Pennsylvania, made an agreement with Isaac Craig and Stephen Bayard fol the sale, inter alia, of a piece of land in the “manor of Pittsburgh, lying and being in a point formed by the junction of the two rivers Monongahela and Allegheny ; bonnded on two sides by the rivers aforesaid, on a third side by the top or ditch of Fort Pitt continued from the Monongahela to the salient angle of the northeast bastion, and thence, on the other side of a ditch, out to the Allegheny, containing three acres more or less.”
The subject of this contention is the title to a portion of the above described river front, extended and enlarged by the accretions thereto of nearly a hundred years. Starting with the admission of title in the Penns, the plaintiff gave in evidence the contract of sale above referred to, the deed of December 31st 1784, from the Penns to Craig and Bayard, together with Col. Wood’s plan of Pittsburgh, several deeds of conveyance and other evidence, tending to show that the title acquired by Craig and Bayard was transferred and finally vested in the plaintiff.
Tiie contract of sale was clearly executory. It expressly provided for a formal deed of conveyance within a year, and also that the consideration thereof should be determined by a bona fide sale of a like quantity of adjoining land. The deed called for by the agreement was executed and delivered within the year, but the land thereby conveyed was not the same, in all respects, as that described in the agreement. According to the description contained in the deed itself, it conveyed thirty-two lots or pieces of ground situated at a point formed by the two rivers Monongahela and Allegheny in the town of Pittsburgh, marked in Col. Wood’s plan of said town Nos. 1 to 17 inclusive, Nos. 132 to 145 inclusive, and No. 260 ; “ said plan being recorded or intending to be recorded in the office for recording deeds in Westmoreland county: The said lots Nos. 1 to 17 inclusive are bounded northwardly by said Allegheny river, eastwardly by Marbury street, southwardly by Penn street andsouthwestwardly by said Monongahela river; the said lots Nos. 132 to 144 inclusive, are bounded southwestwardly
We have no doubt the conclusion reached in that case was correct and should have been accepted as the final settlement of a question which is now resurrected after the lapse of more than half a century. It is true the parties to this contention, being different, are not bound by that decision, but the question is substantially the same, and it ought to require a very clear case to justify us in reaching a different conclusion. Instead of being departed from, however, the controlling principle of that case has been recognized and followed in subsequent cases. In the Borough of Birmingham v. Anderson, 12 Wright 253, it was held that where the proprietor of a town plan fronting on a navigable river, in his deed conveying some of the lots, refers to the plan as descriptive of the lots conveyed and their location, the plan thereby becomes an essential part of the conveyance and has the same force and effect as if copied into the deed; and, in construing such a deed wherein the lots are in terms bounded by “-the river,” the location- of the lots is so
"Without pursuing the subject further, we think the Court of Common Pleas was clearly right in sustaining the judgment of non-suit.
Judgment affirmed.