Evans v. Womack

Citations

• 48 Tex. 230

Syllabus

<p>I. Homestead.—B owned and occupied in a town a house, with garden, lot, and other ordinary appendages of a homestead. He afterwards purchased eleven acres of land, separated from his house-lot by intervening streets and lots owned by others, and distant from his house three or four hundred yards. The land thus purchased was cleared, fenced, and placed in cultivation : Held—</p> <p>1. That whether the eleven acres thus purchased was included in the town limits, or situated in the country, under the Constitution and laws in force in 1860, the fact that its use, either by its being cultivated or rented, contributed to the support of B’s family, did not make it a part of the homestead.</p> <p>2. Had it been a horse-lot or garden, used in connection with the residence as such appendages are commonly used in a town, its separation from the residence by a -street would not divest it of its homestead character;</p> <p>2. Pleading..—In trespass to try title, a petition which alleges title and seizin in the plaintiff on the 18th of January, 1873, and ouster by defendant on the 12th of March, 1875, is not on that account defective, on general exception.</p> <p>3. Pleading.—The petition, in trespass to try title, is not that character of pleading which is required to he “certain, to a certain intent, in every particular,” as those terms are understood at common law.</p> <p>4. Practice—Evidence.—An affidavit made for the purpose of authorizing the introduction in evidence of a copy of a deed, need not in terms allege that the original is “lost,” if it states facts reasonably showing that it was lost.</p>