Tolleston Club of Chicago v. Lindgren
39 Ind. App. 448 | Ind. Ct. App. | 1906
Suit by appellees to quiet title to section twenty-one, township thirty-six north, range eight west in Lake county. The complaint is in the ordinary form of a suit to quiet title. Demurrer to the complaint overruled. Answer by appellant in two paragraphs: (1) General denial; (2) that on February 25, 1873, the United States then owning the land, congress passed an act for the survey and sale of the same, which was done, and the land was conveyed to divers purchasers, and patents were issued under which the purchasers became seized in fee and from whom by mesne conveyances appellant holds title. Decree was rendered upon the finding in appellees’ favor that they are the owners of the southeast quarter of the above section, and quieting their title.
The land in question was surveyed in 1834, and that part containing sections sixteen and twenty-one, as the same appear on the United States survey map of 1836, is as follows:
The decree rendered quieted appellees’ title to the southeast quarter of section twenty-one. The actual controversy, as presented by the assignment of errors, is whether appellees have a prevailing title to the strip north of lots one and two and south of the half-section line; that is, did the State, in the patents issued to Hart in 1857, convey all the land in section twenty-one? It has been held that the title to the whole of section twenty-one passed to the State from the United States. Tolleston Club v. State (1895), 141 Ind. 197; Tolleston Club v. Clough (1896), 146 Ind. 93. The title passed to the State through the provision of the act of congress approved September 28, 1850, and the lands were granted to the State to enable the State “to construct the necessary levees and drains to reclaim the swamp and overflowed lands therein.” ' The sales made by the State on January 12, 1857, were made under the swamp-land act of May 29, 1852 (1 R. S. 1852, p. 471 et seq.). The title of that act is “An act to regulate the sale of the swamp lands donated by the United States to the State of Indiana, and to provide for the draining and reclaiming thereof, in accordance with the condition of said grant.”
Decree reversed.