188 Pa. 40 | Pa. | 1898
Opinion bx
The controversy is as to a strip of land only a few feet wide
We think this a departure from the settled law of evidence in this state in reference to such documents. The map was over sixty years old; it was found in the files in the proper office at Harrisburg, in a book entitled “ Plan Book No. 23 of Public Works,” in the very custody and place it should have been. We do not think that, to give effect to such a map, thus guarded, as evidence, it was necessary that defendant should go further and show that it was framed and filed at the exact time the state entered upon the land of which the map purports to be the boundary. The undisputed evidence is that settlements were made with lot owners in Huntingdon while the work was going on, and for some years afterwards. Just when this work was fully completed does not clearly appear from the evidence. The learned judge assumes as a fact that the map was made in 1832, and that the canal had been completed before that time; but as late as March 21, 1831, the legislature (see P. L. page 195) passed an act directing the canal commissioners to prosecute without delay the work from Huntingdon to Hollidaj'sburg. Taken altogether the evidence shows that the map was made, either while the work was progressing or about the date of its completion, and was intended to show the boundaries of the state’s appropriation at that point. In Commonwealth v. Alburger, 1 Wharton, 469, a copy of a plan of the city of Philadelphia, purporting to have been made in 1683, and on file in the surveyor general’s office, was offered to show boundaries, and admitted against objection. This Court said it was undoubtedly evidence, being a copy of an official paper on file in the proper place, and of great antiquity. In Huffman v. McCrea, 56 Pa. 95, tried in 1867, an old draft was offered and admitted in evidence, which the witness who identified it said he had first seen in 1836, and that it then looked old; it was admitted, and this Court held the ruling to be correct, because, on a question of boundary, it was an ancient document.
This, then, was an ancient document, bearing two distinct
The judgment of the Superior Court is reversed, and that of the common pleas affirmed.