Nathan Clifford

“ Whether the sale was made at private or public sale does not appear, nor in the view taken of the case is it of any importance to inquire. Deposition of the governor was taken to prove the authenticity of the grant, and he testified that his signature appearing in the paper was his genuine signature. Question was put directly to the witness, whether the grant was made in virtue of the colonization law of the eighteenth of August, 1824, or of the regulations of the twenty-first of November, 1828, but his answer was evasive and unsatisfactory. ”

“ This was a petition for the confirmation of a land claim under the act of the third of March, 1851, and the case comes before the court upon appeal from a decree of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of California. Appellee claims the land and property in question as purchaser from Antonio Jos e Cot and Jos e Antonio Pico, who, as he alleges, were the original grantees of the same under the departmental government of California. ”

“ Title is claimed by virtue of an alleged sale of the property made under the authority of the governor of the department. Grant made in pursuance of the sale is dated at Los Angeles, on the eighteenth day of May, 1846, and purports to have been executed in payment of two thousand dollars in money and four hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents in grain, with which the grantees had assisted the government in its exigencies, they obligating themselves to satisfy the debt of the mission in produce within four years. ”