Fisk v. Corey

Citations

• 141 Pa. 334
• 21 A. 594
• 1891 Pa. LEXIS 1073

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported.]</p> <p>1. The testimony of surveyors that they had run the lines of an official survey, getting their starting point from a marked tree upon an adjoining tract, pointed out by a deceased surveyor as a recognized corner of the adjoining survey, was, in this case, sufficient, in the absence of testimony to the contrary, to establish a location prima facie.</p> <p>(а) Two adjoining tracts of land were originally surveyed in the names of Moses Starr and Samuel Giffin respectively. A patent for each of these tracts was issued in 1815 to John Reed and others. In 1879, au assessment of 100 acres, as unseated land, was made in the warrantee names of “Moses Starr and Samuel Griffin,” for school purposes.</p> <p>(б) Upon this assessment, the county commissioners levied a tax for county purposes. In 1882, the county treasurer sold the 100 acres for unpaid taxes, and made a deed to the purchaser. It was alleged that the land intended to be assessed and sold was a parcel of land covered by a natural lake, situated partly on the Starr and partly on the Giffin tracts:</p> <p>2. The assessment of the land in the joint names of the separate warrantees, not shown to have ever been jointly interested, and without other matter of identification, coupled with the fact that the name Griffin was substituted for Giffin, amounted to more than a mere irregularity, and the tax sale based thereon conferred no title.</p> <p>3. A sale for taxes, as one tract and for a gross sum, of separate tracts which are neither held as one nor owned by the same person at the time of the assessment, and assessed together in his name as the owner of the whole, will confer no title upon the purchaser: Harper y. McKeehan, 3 W. & S. 238; Russel v. Werntz, 24 Pa. 337, distinguished.</p> <p>4. It is now well settled, though the decisions were not formerly to this effect, that the land assessed must in some way be identified from something appearing in the assessment, otherwise it cannot be sold