Joseph P. Bradley

“ It is settled doctrine that as a latent ambiguity is only disclosed by extrinsic evidence, it may be removed by extrinsic evidence. Such an ambiguity may arise upon a will, either when it names a person as the object of a gift, or a thing as the subject of it, and there are two persons or things that answer such name or description; or, secondly, it may arise when the will contains a misdescription of the object or subject; as where there is no such person or thing in existence, or, if in existence, the person is not the one intended, or the thing does not belong to the testator. ”

“ Sufficient appears from the authorities already quoted to show that while no bill in equity lies to reform a will, because its author is dead, and his intent can only be known from the language he has used, when applied to the circumstances by which he was surrounded, yet a careful study of that language and of those circumstances will generally disclose any inadvertency or mistake in the description of persons or things, and the manner in which it should be corrected, without adding anything to the testator's language, and thereby making a different will from that left by him. ”

“ We know that such a lot did exist, and only one such lot in the world, and that this lot was the lot in question in this cause, namely, lot number 3, in square 406. Then is it not most clear that the words of the will, 'lot numbered six, in square four hundred and three,' contained a false description. The testator, evidently by mistake, put 'three' for 'six,' and 'six' for 'three,' a sort of misspeech to which the human mind is perversely addicted. It is done every day even by painstaking people. ”