Case ID: tenn_7/html/0236-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Peck, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Supreme Court of Errors and Appeals. Columbia.
    1823.
    LEWIS’S LESSEE v. HARWELL ET AL.
    The course of the first line of a grant being given, and a marked line found with a small variation from the given course, the second line not having been run or marked at making the survey, must be run with a like variation to ascertain the land granted. [Acc. Sevier v. wilson, Peck, 146, and cases there cited.]
    The record presented the following case. The plaintiff claimed under a grant from the State of North Carolina, for 5,000 acres, issued to William T. Lewis, dated 10th of July, 1788, and which was proved to include the land in controversy. The chain of title was regularly deduced to the lessor of the plaintiff.
    The defendants claim under a grant of the same date, but earlier number. A chain of conveyances was regularly deduced.
    Neither of the surveys had been actually marked out by the surveyor prior to the issuance of the grants. The beginning of the plaintiff’s grant was established; the beginning and second corner of the defendants’ were also established, and a line extending between them apparently as old as the date of the survey. *
    The bearing of the lines differed one and a half degrees south of west from the course called for; and the north line with the same variation would be at right angles. It was proved that if the second line of the defendant’s tract, where no marks could be found, were run to the point of the needle at this time, such line would exclude the defendants from within the bounds of his own grant, but if run with a variation like that found upon the ascertained line, the defendants would be covered by their title.
    The Court charged the jury, if in running the marked line a variation was found, and the second line had not been marked, they must run a course which would have been the magnetic north at the time of making the original survey, taking the line run as data.
    Verdict for the defendants, who in argument before this Court rely upon the case of Sevier v. Wilson; also upon the acts of Assembly requiring surveys to be made in a square or oblong, and upon the presumption that the surveyor, in making the original survey, bad done his duty.
   Peck, J.

This case cannot, in principle, be distinguished from the case of Sevier’s Lessee v. Wilson, determined by the whole Court at Sparta, last term.

Let the judgment be affirmed.