33 Vt. 110 | Vt. | 1860
The only importance of the fact whether William Annis the grandfather of the pauper was married to Nancy Woodward, is the effect which was produced by his having a lawful wife remaining in Peacham, after he was arrested and committed to the jail in Chelsea, upon the question of his residence, home, or domicil, during that time.
We regard it as now well settled that evidence of reputation and cohabitation is competent to prove a marriage, whenever the question arises in any civil action, except in actions for criminal conversation. The evidence introduced being legally admissible as tending to establish a marriage, and the court below having found the fact of a marriage from it, that fact must be allowed to have its proper effect upon the question of the husband’s domicil.
The turning question in the case is, whether the said William Annis acquired a settlement in the town of Peacham by residing in that town one full year, in the years 1816 and 1817. He went into that town to reside in the spring of 1816, married a wife there, became a housekeeper there, and so remained up to January, 1817, when he was arrested on a charge of larceny and, in default of furnishing bail for his appearance at the then next term of the court in Orange county, was committed to jail in Chelsea, where he remained until the June term 1817, when he was tried and convicted of the alleged larceny, and sent to the state prison for the term of seven years. After he was so committed to jail his wife returned to the house of her father in Peacham and there remained until her death in the summer of 1818. It is very clear that Annis, after he was so committed to jail in Chelsea, could not in any fair or legal sense be said to have any residence or domicil in that town, because his stay there was by force of legal constraint and compulsion, and not by reason of any will or choice of his own. In all such cases, even where the imprisonment is upon civil process for the non-payment of a debt (when such imprisonment was allowed) it was always held that the person imprisoned had no residence, but, however long such imprisonment might last, continued to be legally a transient person. This was carried so far in one case that when a debtor confined in jail for debt gave a jail bond, which entitled
The case of Reading v. Westport, 19 Conn. 561, is also relied on by the plaintiff, in which case it was decided that an imprisonment in the state prison for two years under a conviction for bigamy did interrupt a residence in a town where the man had formerly lived, and to which he returned after serving out his sentence. It deserves to be mentioned however, that it does not appear from that case that the pauper had any home or family in ■such town, or had any intention to return to it during the term of his imprisonment. But the decision is not placed at all on the want of such facts, but wholly on the effect of the absence under the imprisonment.
It does not become necessary in the present case to determine the effect of an imprisonment in the state prison under a conviction for a crime, and a sentence of imprisonment for a term of years. There are manifest grounds to distinguish such a case from the present. In such case it is wholly beyond the power of such person to return to his home if he have such intention, and perhaps it would not be improper to say that he has voluntarily put it out of his power.
Again there may be legal force in the suggestion made in one of the English cases cited, that a conviction for a felony and sentence of transportation, made the convict civiliter mortuus, and that thereby he forfeited all his civil rights, and was not regarded
But in our judgment the imprisonment of Annis, before his trial, did not prevent the continuation of his constructive residence in Peacham where his family and home were, and that he gained a settlement in that town, and thereby lost his settlement in the town of Vershire.
The judgment is therefore affirmed.