Olewine v. Messmore

Citations

• 128 Pa. 470
• 18 A. 495
• 1889 Pa. LEXIS 807

Syllabus

<p>1. In an action to try the title to land, an ancient deed from one in whom no title is shown, conveying the land to a person under whom the plaintiff claims, is admissible to exhibit color of title and claim in the grantee, when followed by proof that he actually settled on the land and continuously occupied it for the statutory period.</p> <p>2. While a patentee is regarded as a trustee for the rightful owner, a patent containing a recital that the rights of the warrantee have become vested in the patentee, is prima facie evidence of title in the latter, and especially against one who relies on possession alone, who shows no title, or whose rights, if any, accrued after the date of the patent.</p> <p>3. When one takes actual possession, by residence or cultivation, of a part of the land of another, under a bona fide claim, accompanied by a designation of boundaries and the ordinary use of woodland, lying within the designated bounds, and continues such use and possession for twenty-one years, he gains a title to all included within his lines.</p> <p>4. But, if the grantee in a deed whose description embraces a strip of uninclosed woodland to which his vendor had no title, occupy, by residence and cultivation, only that part of the land conveyed to which his vendor did have title, his cutting firewood, making rails, and even making a clearing, upon the other part, not followed up by residence, inclosure or cultivation, give him no adverse possession thereof.</p> <p>5. Adverse possession of land may be said to be founded in trespass, büt it must be a trespass constantly continued by acts on the premises: it must challenge the right to all the world; the claimant must “ keep his flag flying, and present a hostile front to all adverse pretensions.”</p>