Case ID: mass_16/html/0376-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Inhabitants of Berkley versus the Inhabitants of Somerset.
    A child born to one who had been warned to depart the town, under the provincial act of 4 Will. Mar., gained a settlement in such town by a year’s residence, after coming of age, without being warned to depart.
    Assumpsit for expenses incurred by the plaintiffs in the support of one James Marvel, alleged to have his settlement in Somerset. It was agreed that Thomas M., grandfather of the pauper, removed from Boston to that part of Swansey which is now Somerset, in the year 1733, and was duly warned with his family to depart, according to the law then in force. Stephen M., the pauper’s [ *455 ] father, * was born in the same territory in the year 1737, and continued to reside there until the year 1769, having never been personally warned to depart. The pauper was born in the same place, in the year 1758, and afterwards removed to Reho both with his father; and he never acquired a settlement in his own right.
    " Judgment was to be rendered upon the facts agreed, as the opin ion of the Court should be, by the default of the defendants, or the nonsuit of the paintiffs.
    
      W. Baylies and Morton, for the plaintiffs,
    contended that the pauper’s father, having resided in Swansey twelve months after coming of age, without being warned to depart, gained a settlement there, which he transmitted to his son. A slave, under the colonial act of 4 Will. If Mar., c. 13, acquired a settlement by being permitted to reside a year in the town of his master, after his manumission, without warning . The same principle must apply to minors coming of age.
    
      [By the act incorporating the town of Somerset 
      , all persons born on the territory which was to form the new town, who might thereafter become chargeable for support, and who had not gained a settlement elsewhere, were to be the proper poor of Somerset.]
    
    
      Wheaton, for the defendants,
    argued that a warning of a man and his family to depart, extended to after-born children and their descendants, so as to prevent their gaining a settlement. Children so born could not be said to have come to sojourn, and so were not within the words of the act. Overseers had no means of knowing when children came of age, and- ought not therefore to be held to warn them .
    
      
       4 Mass. Rep. 123, Winchendon va. Hatfield.
      
    
    
      
      
        Stat. 1789. c. 35.
    
    
      
       2 Salk. 256. —Strange, 580. —6 D. & E. 116. —3 Mass. Rep. 322
    
   Per Curiam.

Stephen Marvel, the pauper’s father, acquired a settlement in Swansey, by residing there a year after he came of age, without being warned to leave the town. His son followed his settlement; and by the provision of the act incorporating Somerset, that town * being made liable for the support [ * 456 j of all who derived their settlement from a residence in that part of Swansey, the pauper is chargeable to the defendants.

Defendants defaulted.