Case ID: mass_8/html/0083-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*The Inhabitants of the First Parish in Sutton versus David Cole and Another.
    Where, in a town consisting of two parishes divided by lines, the legislature incorporated a number of the inhabitants of both parishes, with their estates, into a separate religious society; it was held that the members of the new society ceased, from the time of their incorporation, to be members of the respective parishes, of which they were before inhabitants.
    
      Entry sur disseisin, in which the demandants count on their own seisin within thirty years, and on a disseisin by the tenants.
    The original writ was directed to and served by a coroner, and the reason alleged therefor was that one Gibbs Sibley was a member of said parish, and also a deputy of Thomas W. Ward, .Esquire, sheriff of the county of Worcester. At the return term in the Court of Common Pleas, the defendants pleaded in abatement to the writ, that the said Sibley was not a member of the said first parish , on which plea issue was joined, and a verdict rendered for the plaintiffs. Judgment being rendered on the verdict, the plaintiffs appealed, and in this Court submitted the cause to the opinion of the Court upon certain facts agreed.
    The facts stated were, in substance, that John Cole, late of said Sutton, deceased, being seised of the demanded premises, on the third day of February, 1807, made his last will, and therein, among other things, devised as follows, viz.: “ I give and devise to the South Parish in Sutton, to be applied to the use of schools, and to be kept by the inhabitants forever, and the income applied solely for that purpose, all that my messuage and tenement I now live on, together with the buildings situate, lying, and being in the South Parish in Sutton,” bounded as in said will is described ; and after-wards the said testator died, and his said will was duly proved, approved, and allowed.
    Previous to the 28th day of October, 1743, th.e town of Sutton constituted one parish; but on that day all the land in said town lying north of a line drawn three miles southwardly from the north line of the town, and parallel thereto, was, by a vote of the legislature of the then province, made a separate parish or precinct, and in the same vote the remaining part of said town is called the first parish * in Sutton, which said parish is commonly known by the name of “ the South Parish in Sutton.”
    
    On the 25th of June, 1794, the legislature passed an act incorporating certain individuals therein named, inhabitants of said town, together with their estates, (whereof the said Gibbs Sibley is one, and living within the limits of the said first parish,) without reference to the part of the town in which they respectively dwelt, into a religious society, by the name of “ the first congregational society in Sutton.” The said act also provides that all the members of the society thereby incorporated shall be exempt from taxation, for the support of public worship, in any other society in said town.
    If, upon these facts, the Court should be of opinion that the said Gibbs Sibley was an inhabitant of the said first parish in Sutton. the tenants agreed to suffer judgment to go against them by default, but if the Court should be of a different opinion, the demandants agreed to become nonsuit, and that the tenants should have judgment for their costs.
    
      Blake, for the demandants,
    contended that the act of 1794, creating the congregational society, did not dissolve or merge the preexisting first parish or precinct; and that Sibley, although by the act made one of the new society, did not thereby cease to be an inhabitant and membet of the original parish. A congregational society is distinguishable hem a parish or precinct, the former having ecclesiastical rights and powers only; whereas the latter has civil as well as ecclesiastical powers and rights. Thus by the statute of 1789, c. 19, <§> 8, parishes and precincts have authority to raise moneys for the support of school-masters—a power never vested by law in a religious society.
    
      Bigelow and Lincoln for the tenants.
   By the Court.

The question brought before us in this action is whether Gibbs Sibley is, upon the facts shown, an inhabitant of the first parish in the town of Sutton. And we are decidedly of opinion that he is not. The congregational society, created by the statute of 1794, is to every intent *a parish. The persons named in the act, together with their estates, are set off from the rest of the inhabitants and territory of the town, and erected into a corporation well known in this commonwealth by the name of a poll parish. In the language of the declaration of rights prefixed to the constitution, and of our laws, the terms parish and religious society have the same meaning and effect. Let the demandants be called.

Demandants nonsuit.