Case Name: Malone et al. versus Sallada et al.
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1865-01-27
Citations: 48 Pa. 419
Docket Number: 
Parties: Malone et al. versus Sallada et al.
Judges: 
Reporter: Pennsylvania State Reports
Volume: 48
Pages: 419–433

Head Matter:
Malone et al. versus Sallada et al.
Location of surveys by calls for adjoiners.
1. In the location of land warrants, the lines run and marked upon the ground are the true survey; and when found, control the calls for natural, or fixed boundaries.
2. Where a younger calls for an older survey as an adjoiner and no lines have been found to have been marked for the younger, the line of the older survey becomes the division line between the two tracts.
3. If no adjoining survey or natural boundary he called for by the younger survey, and no lines he found on the ground, the lines returned into the land office determine the location.
4. But where, from the return of a survey, it is ascertained that the call for an adjoiner is a mistake, the call may be controlled by the line as returned and the other evidence of location contradictory to the call, even though no line can be found on the ground corresponding to that in the return. Per Agnew, <1.
Error to the Common Pleas of Northumberland, county.
This was an action of ejectment, by Jacob M. Sallada, Henry Taylor, and Levan Mannerbach against James Malone, Daniel Kriegbanm, Robert Hayes; Henrietta Elliot, executors of John Elliot, deceased, and Andrew M. Eastwick, for a tract of land in Mount Carmel township, Northumberland county, containing one hundred and seventy-six acres and eighty-three perches, aDd allowance. Some of the names of the above named plaintiffs and defendants were added on the trial, as their interests in the land in controversy were ascertained.
The plaintiffs claimed title to the land in question under a warrant granted on the 2d day of March 1855, to John C. lleylman, upon which a survey was made of one hundred and seventy- six acres and eighty-three perches, on the 9th day of the same month. They showed that they were entitled to three undivided one-fourth parts of all the title and interest acquired by the warrantee, and there was no question as to its location. But it was claimed by the defendants that it was laid upon land which had been appropriated by a prior warrant and survey in the name of Isaac Miller. The only controversy between the parties was in reference to the location of the western boundary of that tract. It was one of a batch of warrants applied for on the 3d and granted on the 10th day of May 1793. These warrants were owned by Dr. Ruston, who paid the purchase-money on the 3d day of September 1793, and for whom a survey was made upon the Isaac Miller warrant, and also upon wai-rants to Jesse Brooks, Jesse Evans, Isaac Taylor, and William Gilbert, on the 17th day of October 1793.
The official return of survey of Isaac Miller called for land of William Gilbert, on the north, and for an older survey in the name of Lawrence Lomison, on the south. Its northern boundary line as returned was of the same length as the southern boundary line of the Gilbert tract. The lines of the Lomison tract were found on the south, and the evidence which showed that its eastern boundary line was originally run, was unquestioned. There were other facts in which the testimony of the witnesses upon both sides concur, among which was the fact that the northern line of the William Gilbert tract was run and marked upon the ground in 1793; the pine called for at the north-west corner was still found there, with the original marks of the surveyor. It is also the south-west corner of the Jesse Brooks survey, made on the same day, and for the same party. The southern and western lines of the last-named tract were run and marked upon the ground, and its corners were, according to unquestioned testimony, still to be found as returned. There was one other important fact, viz., the call for the stone-corner, south-west of Miller, and also a corner of the Lomison and Taylor tracts was originally a corner of the Lomison survey, and when the others were made it was adopted by the surveyors as corner for them.
The defendants contended that as there was no evidence of marks upon the ground, showing that the western line of the Miller tract was run by the surveyor, and as it called for the “ Starr” tract on that end, that its lines must be extended until they reached the warrant or survey, in the name of Merrick Starr, which lies some two hundred rods farther west than the Miller tract would go, according to the courses and distances returned. If so extended, it would cover all the land surveyed under the junior -warrant to Heylman.
These were the main facts of the case, derived from a large amount of documentary and other evidence.
Io the course of the trial the defendants called Jacob Yarnell, who testified that he had been on the land in dispute, and had resided on it with his father.
Defendants proposed to prove by this and other witnesses, that Valentine Brobst and others, under whom defendants claimed title, took possession of the property in dispute, by the lines of the Merrick Starr survey, now claimed as the western boundary of their land; that they made improvements upon the property, and cleared the land. That as early as 1814, the western boundary of the Miller survey was fixed, and claimed by the owners, as adjoining the Starr survey as now claimed, and that they had, from that time to this, claimed that as their line, exercising acts of ownership over it to that line — and had been in actual possession, and paid the taxes assessed thereon from the year 1814 to this time.
The plaintiffs objected to this offer, for the following reasons :—
1st. If the land west of the line running from the pine to the stone corner was vacant, nothing short of continued personal resident settlement upon the vacant lands would give any right thereto, as against a warrant and survey, such settlement must be made with a view to making it the means of supporting a family.
2d. If the warrant of Isaac Miller covers the land in dispute, then their title being older than plaintiffs must prevail, and. the evidence was irrelevant.
8d. The cutting of timber and claim of title, with acts of ownership, cannot extend the boundaries of the Miller survey.
4th. The defendants do not propose to give such evidence as would give a pre-emption right to the lands in controversy.
5th. The evidence offered under the facts in this case is entirely irrelevant.
The evidence was rejected, and an exception for the defendants.
The court below (Elwell, P. J.), after stating the facts, charged the jury as follows :—
“ When a younger survey calls for an older one as an adjoiner, the older becomes the boundary line of the younger, unless a line was actually marked upon the ground limiting the younger to a distance short of the older survey. The lines run and marked will control the calls for other objects. In the absence of such adjoiners, or other fixed monuments, and also of lines marked upon the ground, the courses and distances called for in the return of survey are to be taken as the guide in ascertaining the location.
[“In 1793, when the Isaac Miller survey was made, the Merrick Starr survey had not been returned into the land office. A Warrant in that name had been issued nineteen years before, on the 81st March 1774, but no return was made of any survey upon it until 1805, twelve years after the making of the Miller survey. No lines of 1775 have been found upon the Starr survey, and the only evidence that any survey had been made earlier than 1793, is the statement of the deputy surveyor, that he resurveyed it in 1805 upon old lines of 1775. But the Miller tract is to be located by the facts as they existed at the date of its survey. There was then nothing in the land office to show the location of the Starr tract, nothing by which the officers could ascertain whether the survey as returned would have to be extended two hundred rods, or two miles, to make the Miller adjoin the Starr tract.
“When the surveyor has knowledge of the existence and location of an older survey, it is no objection to his survey that his lines must be considerably extended to reach the older survey, it being called for as adjoining. But when it is evident from the official papers and from undisputed facts, that he did not know the location of the older survey, and when, by extending his survey so as to adjoin the older survey, will lengthen some of his lines nearly two hundred rods; change the figure of the tract, and alter every course and distance, it cannot legally be so extended.]
“ It is very evident, from the official drafts, as well as from the concurring testimony of all the surveyors, that the deputy surveyor of 1793 did not know the location and figure of the Merrick Starr survey. He calls for Starr’ at the west end of Isaac Miller and William Gilbert; at the east end of Jesse Evans and Isaac Taylor, and on the south side of Jesse Brooks, when in fact Isaac Taylor, as surveyed by him and returned, covered the greater part of the ‘Starr’ tract as run in 1805. It does not lie on the west of Gilbert, nor east of Evans and Taylor, nor south of and adjoining Jesse Brooks. The east end of Merrick Starr contains five courses, all of them largely variant from the two returned for the west end of Miller.
“ Again : it is conclusively shown that he left the space marked 4 Starr,’ of the width of two hundred and twelve rods, and in the form of a parallelogram, and not of the shape of the Starr survey. It is shown in this wise: he measured and marked the south line of the Jesse Brooks tract, and made corners at the south-east and south-west, which, as testified, are still to be found. The length of the south line of that tract is four hundred and twenty-four perches. He returned the Jesse Evans tract as extending from the south-west corner of the Brooks tract east two hundred and twelve perches, thus leaving the space which he calls 4 Starr’ two hundred and twelve rods in width at that end.
[“We therefore say to you that, under all the evidence in this cause, the call for ‘ Starr’ on the draft of the Miller survey, ought not to control the other facts which bear upon the location, and is not to be considered as a call for an adjoining older survey, under the rules which I have before stated.
“ The legal and proper place of the western line of the Isaac Miller tract is to be ascertained by a line from the pine, northwest corner of the William Gilbert survey, to the stone corner of the Lomison, Taylor and Miller tracts, following between those points the official- courses and distances as near as may be.”]
Among the points presented by the defendants, on which the instruction of the court was requested, were the following, which were answered as follows :—
1. If the jury believe that the deputy surveyor did not run and mark the western line of Isaac Miller upon the ground at any place east of the survey of Merrick Starr, then the Isaac Miller survey must be located to extend to and adjoin the Merrick Starr, and the verdict of the jury ought to be in favour of the defendants. Which was answered thus:—
“I decline to charge as requested on this point, for reasons stated in my general charge.”
2. If the surveys Isaac Taylor, Isaac Miller, William Gilbert, Jesse Brooks, Jesse Evans, and the other surveys belonging to Dr. Thomas Ruston, returned as made on the same day, viz., on the 17th October 1793, when located as a block of surveys, would cover the land in dispute, then the verdict of the jury ought to be in favour of the defendants.
“ The proposition contained in this point would be correct, if the several surveys called for each other, but as they are so located as to call for an open space designated ‘ Starr,’ of nearly two hundred rods in width, lying between the tracts on the east, and those on the west, the land occupying this space cannot be held to be covered by them.”
Under these rulings there was a verdict and judgment in favour of plaintiffs for three undivided fourth parts of all the land described in the writ, except a strip of land on the south side of the Heylman survey in evidence, twenty-four perches wide, and extending from Isaac Miller on the eas-t to Merrick Starr on the west, as per diagram filed with the verdict.
The errors assigned were, the rejection of the testimony offered by the defendants as above stated, the answer given to defendants’ points, and so much of the charge of the court as is printed above in brackets.
Joshua Comly and J. B. Packer, for plaintiffs in error.
Jacob Hoffman, William W. Rockafeller, and John W. Ryan, for defendants.
January 27th 1865,

Opinion:
The opinion of the court was delivered, by
Woodward, C. J.
— The question in this case was, whether the warrant and survey in the name of Isaac Miller — one of the series of twenty-five warrants issued in 1793 to Dr. Ruston — included the land in dispute. If it did, there was no vacant land at that place for the Heylman warrant and survey of 1855, under which the plaintiff claimed — if it did not, the land was vacant when the Heylman warrant was laid, and the plaintiffs were entitled to recover.
The main dispute had regard to the nature of the evidence by which this question of location was to be determined. The defendants below, who claimed under the Miller warrant, contended that it was to be located by its calls for adjoiners. There was a tract in the name of Peter Smith on the east, another of the series of twenty-five warrants — on the south Lawrence Lomison, an elder survey, whose location was well defined, and at the west, the deputy surveyor had written the word " Starr" in his return, which it was said was a call for a surveyed tract in the name of Merrick Starr. Located by these adjoiners, Isaac Miller would take the land in dispute, but several of its courses and distances, and the configuration of the survey as returned into the land office, would essentially be changed. Notwithstanding these consequences, however, the defendants insisted upon its location by its calls; the word Starr being read Merrick Starr.
The plaintiffs, on the other hand, contended that the whole block of twenty-five surveys should be located by the marks on the ground, with no other reference to calls for adjoiners than such as would be consistent with the marks on the ground; and that it is immaterial that no marks are found on the Miller survey, since authentic marks are found on other tracts of the block sufficient to locate the whole block, and that these marks apply with decisive effect to Isaac Miller. They deny also that Merrick Starr was called for on the west of Isaac Miller, but if it was they say it was a mistake, and must be rejected in favour of the courses and distances as returned. In a word, the plaintiffs would locate the Isaac Miller by the marks on the ground of other tracts in connection with which it was surveyed and returned.
It seldom happens that a body of old surveys made in the mountainous districts of the state, can be so well located by marks on the ground as these twenty-five tracts of Dr. Ruston. Drafts have not been exhibited to us of all the tracts, but we have a connected draft of nine of them (not including William Lane, the leading warrant), and we have copies of the official return of these nine tracts, and from these, in connection with the testimony of the surveyors, there can be no difficulty in locating the exterior lines of the block. There were the older surveys, Jeremiah Paul and Lawrence Lomison, lying on the south, with abundant marks on the ground to determine their location, and they were called for by Isaac Taylor and Isaac Miller, two of Dr. Huston's block. Then, there was the pine corner of William Gilbert and Jesse Brooks, verified by all the surveyors, and other marks upon the northern boundary of Gilbert and the southern of Brooks, which counted to the date of these surveys, all which, taken in connection with the marks on the older surveys that were called for, determine with unusual precision the location of this block of surveys. And when we are dealing with blocks of surveys we must remember that the marks on any part of the block belong to each tract of the block. Interior lines were never run, and marks are not to be looked for on them ; but if marks are found upon the ground to establish an exterior line of a particular tract of the block, and we find other tracts returned with that same line, we are to presume it was adopted as the boundary of these tracts, no less than of the tracts which bear the marks. When the surveyor, for in stance, ran from the pine corner of Gilbert and Brooks to the stone corner of Lomison and Paul, his course for more than three hundred perches was S. 10 E., and his only other course for eighty-nine perches was S. 4J E., and these two courses carried him the whole width of the Gilbert and Miller tracts, and formed the western boundary of these respective tracts. No marks are found on these lines, but the pine and the stones are sufficient to locate them, unless we are to reject them for those on the eastern side of Merrick Starr. To do so would extend the side lines of Isaac Miller some two hundred perches beyond the official calls, would substitute several other courses and distances for the two that were returned as the eastern boundary of Isaac Miller, would reject the stone corner altogether, for the Merrick Starr does not go to it, and would distort the shape of the survey as returned into the land office.
When a younger survey calls for an older, the lines of the older, on the side on which the younger lies,' are what are called for, and hence the surveyor was not expected to run and mark new lines. His instructions, indeed, forbade him to do so. But if he protracted and returned lines that do not coincide with those of the older survey which is called for, they are to be rejected, and the lines of the older survey adopted unless marks on the ground forbid it. Such was the case of Quinn v. Hart, 7 Wright 337. In that case there were no marks to control the location of the Fishburn warrant (an individual warrant and not one of a block), and we decided that it must go to its calls, though it changed the official courses and distances. That case is supposed to rule this in favour of the'defendants below, and there would be considerable force in the argument, if this case, like that, were without marks of the younger survey. But, say counsel in reply, there-are no marks on Isaac Miller the younger survey here, and therefore it must go to its call. The answer is, that though Isaac Miller bears no marks, the body of which it is a member is well marked, and if the defendants were engaged to establish it according to its official return, would they not insist upon appropriating those marks on the body to this member ? They would say the twenty-five tracts were located at the same time, by the same surveyor, adjoining each other, and returned into the land office with calls for such and such courses and distances, and there are marks on the ground to prove incontestably that some of the lines were run where the returns describe. Then they would argue, with conclusive force, that every tract of that body was to be located consistently with these incontestable lines; that the return of the surveys was a valid appropriation of the land, indicated by the official lines, and that all the official lines were proved by marks on the ground, which establish any of them. In this manner they would defend the location of the Isaac Miller where the official lines place it, and if the " Starr" were pleaded against them as an adjoiner, they would say th,at whatever the deputy surveyor meant by writing that name on his survey, he could not have intended it for Merrick Starr, for that lay more than half a mile west of the westernmost boundary of Isaac Miller as returned. In a word, the marks of the body would be appropriated to the benefit of the particular tract, and thus, according to all the cases, Quinn v. Hart included, the marks on the ground would decide the location, rather than an equivocal and inaccurate call for an ad-joiner. .
What would be a complete vindication of the location of Isaac Miller according to its official lines, supposing it assailed, is equally conclusive against the attempt to carry it beyond its official lines. It must lie where it was placed, and seeing that it was part of a block, it must lie where the block placed it; and of the location of the block the marks on the ground are the best evidence, in behalf of -which calls for adjoiners, even if unequivocal, must be rejected.
The learned counsel for the plaintiffs in error, foreseeing how the application of these undoubted principles of law would take away this land from the Isaac Miller, were constrained to argue, before they quit the case, that perhaps the call for Starr ivas a mistake, and that the twenty-five tracts were surveyed in a solid body, that excluded the possibility of vacant land between Taylor and Evans on the one side, and Gilbert and Miller on the other.
The supposed vacancy is a parallelogram, having, according to the official drafts, Jesse Brooks on the north, William Gilbert and Isaac Miller on the east, and a part of Isaac Taylor also on the south. These five tracts, all belonging to the body of twenty-five, surrounded completely the supposed vacant land on which the Héylman warrant was laid. The Merrick Starr, which is mostly within the lines of Isaac Taylor, lies on the west of the vacant land. Now, as I understand the. argument of counsel, we are to disregard the Merrick Starr, and the vacant land, and are to bring Gilbert and Miller on the east and Evans and Taylor on the west, together, having for a common boundary an interior line, which was never run on the ground, but the course of which would be N. 10 W.
The objection to such a location is, that it would alter the official distances of some of the tracts very essentially, and violate the calls of each one of the surveys, without a mark on the ground to justify it. The distance from the western boundary of Gilbert and Miller to the eastern boundary of Evans and Taylor is, according to the official papers, two hundred and two perches, and to bring these tracts to a common boundary this distance must be added to the side line of either Gilbert and Miller, or of Evans and Taylor, or must be divided between them. I see no warrant for doing this except the general policy of excluding strips of vacant land in the midst of a body of surveys; but against this stands the fact, that every one of these surveys calls for " Starr" in the very place where the vacancy is alleged. For instance, Jesse Brooks calls for "Starr" on the south, Taylor and Evans for " Starr" on the east and north, and Gilbert and Miller for " Starr" on the west. No one of these tracts calls for the other on that side.
Now, it is unnecessary to say that this was a valid call, and quite impossible to decide that the.surveyor meant to call for the Merrick Star survey, which, if really made before 1803, was not laid where these calls would place it. But is it not apparent that the surveyor did not mean to locate these tracts as adjoining each other ? That is now our immediate question.
If he had written the word "vacant" instead of "Starr," he would not any more certainly have indicated an intention to keep the tracts apart, which the argument proposes to join together. In some way, not now explainable, the surveyor had got the idea of a prior appropriation of this land in the name of Starr, and so marked it on the return of his surveys of 1793; and whilst it does not prove such prior appropriation, it does prove that, unless we are are to make a survey for the parties, we cannot join together tracts that were placed two hundred rods asunder. Therefore, we can no more extend these surveys against the manifest intention of the surveyor, for the mere purpose of excluding vacant land, than we can allow the call for Merrick Starr (supposing that to have been the call intended) to overrule the marks on the ground. The defence was no more sustainable in the one aspect than the other.
But the court is complained of for withdrawing the question from the jury. The learned judge ruled that the call for Starr " ought not to control the other facts which bear upon the location ;" and that the western line of Isaac Miller was to run from the pine to the stones corner above mentioned. As these corners were proved beyond all contradiction, there was no error in assuming that the jury would find them, and the direction amounted only to a correct enunciation of the legal principle that official courses verified by marks on the ground, were to prevail over calls for adjoiners. This was scarcely withdrawing thé case. It was telling the jury, plainly, how to apply the evidence consistently with legal principles, but it left them to make the application. Location of surveys is generally a question of fact for the jury, for it generally depends upon conflicting proofs; but where the proofs are uncontradicted, and the event depends upon the principles of law which govern the legal effect of the proofs, it is the duty of the judge to declare the principles, and it is no fault that he does it plainly and intelligibly.
I have thus far considered the ease as if Merrick Starr were a regular and valid survey of 1785. The court below held that it was not surveyed until 1805, and that no survey in that name existed when the warrants of 1793 were laid, and this ruling is assigned for error.
We do not think the question is worth debating. Grant, if you please, that the court were wrong in treating the Merrick Starr as a survey of 1805 instead of 1795, still the conclusions we have reached above would be unaffected. They are founded, indeed, upon the very assumption that Merrick Starr was a survey of 1795. If it were so, the surveyor of 1793 could not have understood its location, or else he did not intend to call for it by his word Starr, for he certainly would never have returned the tract as resurveyed in 1805, as adjoining Evans, Brooks, and Gilbert. But it does not appear to us to be necessary to discuss the question, and it is enough to say that if the court were mistaken, which we do not affirm, it is a harmless error, for which the judgment is not to be reversed.
We cannot perceive that the plaintiffs-in error were injured by the rejection of the evidence alluded to in their first bill of exceptions. The offer was to prove that Brobst took possession "by the lines of the Merrick Starr survey." Now, whether that was a survey of 1775 or of 1805, it was evidently appropriated land, and hence there was no room for the presumption authorized by the sixth section of the act of 27th April 1855 (Purd. 654).
Nor could there be a pre-emption right, both because Brobst, if within the lines either of Merriclc Starr or Isaac Miller, was on land already appropriated, .and because, if not within those lines,, no such acts were offered to be shown as would constitute a settlement on whatever vacant land lay outside the lines of these two tracts. The clearing over these lines, or the cutting of timber beyond them, would not constitute a settlement. There was no offer to prove a residence on the vacant land, and without this the offer amounted to nothing, and was properly rejected.
The judgment is affirmed.