30 Ala. 245 | Ala. | 1857
By the act of congress, entitled “an act supplementary to the several laws for the sale of the public lands,” approved April 5th, 1832, it is provided, that “all public lands of the United States, when offered at private sale, may be purchased, at the option of the purchaser, either in entire sections, half sections, quarter sections, half-quarter sections, or quarter-quarter sections; and in every case of a division of a half-quarter section, the line for the division thereof shall run east and west, and the corners and contents of quarter-quarter sections, which may thereafter be sold, shall be ascertained, as nearly as may be, in the manner and on the principles directed and prescribed by the second section of an
The rules and regulations prescribed by the secretary of the treasury, under the aforesaid act of 1832, among other things, contain the following directions to the surveyors general, to-wit: “In all cases where the quantity of the fractional section, or the portion thereof remaining unsold, and liable to be divided under the act of 5th April, 1832, admits of the sale of one or more quarter sections, you [the surveyors general] will subdivide such quarter sections into quarter-quarter sections, and they will be described by the registers as quarter-quarter sections ; and in describing the residuary lots or portions of such fraction, due reference must be had to the mode adopted in describing the portion of the fraction which has been sold. For instance, where the portion of the fraction heretofore sold has been described as a lot bearing a special number, the residuary fractions will have to be described as lots bearing numbers in a* series consecutive to that commenced by the former subdivision.” * * “Fractional sections containing loss than one hundred and sixty acres, or the-residuary portion of a fractional section, after the subdivision into as many quarter-quarter sections as it is susceptible of, may bo subdivided into lots, each containing the quantity of a quarter-quarter section, as nearly as practicable, by so laying down the line of subdivision as that they shall be twenty chains wide; which distances are to be marked on the plat of subdivision, as are also the areas of the quarter-quarters and residuary fractions.” — Public Land Laws, vol. 2, 933.
Fractional section 18, of township 12, range 6, east, in the Coosa land district, was subdivided according to the aforesaid act of 1832, and the aforesaid rules and regula
All our decisions agree, that the external lines of sections, as actually run and marked by the government surveyor, are the true and established lines; that the corners of sections, as marked by him, are the true and established corners; and that these lines and corners cannot be changed. The cases of Walters v. Commons, 2 Porter, 38, and Nolen v. Parmer, 24 Ala. 391, hold, that the corners of subdivisions of sections are not, like the corners of sections, declared by law to be established “as the proper corners,” but are to be placed “as nearly equidistant as possible from the corners of the section” ; and that, if a mistake is made in that particular, the mistake
Upon the question above considered and decided by us, the charge of the court, construed in connection with the evidence, is in substance as follows: that the contents of subdivision 8 were to be ascertained and determined according to the contents and legal subdivisions of the entire fractional section; and that if the section contained less than the plat of subdivision represented its subdivisions to contain, andallthe subdivisionskadbeenpurchased, the purchaser or owner of a quarter-quarter section did not have the right to recover the full number of acres marked on it in the plat of subdivision, and sold to him by the government, to the exclusion and loss of the purchaser or owner of a “residuary fraction” ; but his right, in such case, was restricted to a recovery of “his pro-rata share.” There is error in that charge; and for that error, the plaintiff would have been entitled to a reversal, if the verdict and judgment had been rendered against him. But that error does not entitle the defendant to a reversal, because, under the undisputed facts of the case, it was in his favor, and could not have injured him. There was no. evidence, or pretense, that the fractional section contained more than the plat of subdivision represented its
If any portion of the charge, when construed in connection with the evidence, could with any reasou be understood or construed as asserting that the plaintiff could recover any land outside of the boundaries of his quarter-quarter section, as designated by the government survey and official plat of subdivision, or for any trespass committed beyond those limits, the case would then be very different from that now presented. But as no portion of the charge could with any reason be so understood or construed, and as the plaintiff is clearly entitled to recover of this defendant any land in his j)ossession which is within the boundaries of the plaintiff’s quarter-quarter section, as indicated by the government survey and official plat of subdivision, we think it clear that no injury has been done to the defendant by any portion of the charge.
"We have carefully examined the several exceptions and assignments of error which are not disposed of by the foregoing part of this opinion, and we think it too clear for argument that there, is nothing in those exceptions and assignments of error. The rulings of the court embraced by them are manifestly correct.
The judgment is affirmed;