Noah Haynes Swayne

“ Carondelet was a village of that part of the Territory which subsequently became the State of Missouri, and contained four descriptions of real property. They were known as in-lots, out-lots, common-field lots, land commons. It is with the last only that we have to do in this case. At the period of the transfer to the United States, the claim of the village to the premises in controversy was supported by no clear and definite evidence, and the out-boundaries of the tract had not been run. ”

“ On the 25th of December, 1797, Soulard, then the surveyor-general of the Territory of Louisiana, certified that at the request of the inhabitants of the village of Carondelet, Berthelemy had been appointed to survey the tract granted to them as commons by Lieutenant Governor Trudeau, and that he had failed to perform the work by reason of his compass being found out of order, and that want of time had prevented the surveyor-general subsequently from having the survey made. ”

“ As the right of the village, according to the judgment of this court in Carondelet v. St. Louis, [10] had been fixed by the resurvey of Brown, in 1834, which was conclusive, as regards all adverse individual claims, the testimony was clearly irrelevant and incompetent and was properly rejected. The acts of 1812 and 1836 were inapplicable to the United States and did not affect their rights. ”