Land title

“ A person owning the paper title to a thousand acre boundary traceable to the Commonwealth without break or flaw, might not be the owner in fact of a single acre of land; as the whole boundary might be covered by senior grants or the natural objects called for, impossible to find.
The only way to be assured of a good title was to make a careful abstract, following that up by an actual survey and obtaining from any person in possession a written declaration that their possession and claim was not adverse to the title and claim of your vendor. ”

“ That homestead claimants who have made bona fide settlement upon public land, and who are living upon, cultivating, and improving the same in accordance with law and the rules and regulations of this Department, with the intention of acquiring title thereto, may cut and remove, or cause to be cut and removed from the portion thereof to be cleared for cultivation, so much timber as may be actually necessary for that purpose or for buildings, fences, and other improvements on the land entered. ”

“ Provided further, That such lands shall be described as set forth in Schedules "A" and "B," and shall be exempted from settlement in the proclamation of the President opening the ceded lands, and that where lands so set apart are not described by legal subdivisions then the township or section or tract of land within whose limits such Indians' selections are located shall not be opened to settlement until the Indian allotments therein contained shall have been surveyed and proper evidence of title issued therefor. ”

“ PUBLIC LAND- The term `public land' means the approximately 622 acres of Federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and identified for conveyance on the map prepared by the Bureau of Land Management entitled `Douglas County Public Utility District Proposal' and dated March 2, 2006. ”

“ The system of land surveys; the reservations for schools, internal improvements, military sites, and public buildings; the preemption claims of settlers; the establishment of land offices, and boards of inquiry, to determine the validity of land titles; the modes of entry, and sale, and of conferring titles; the protection of the lands from trespass and waste ”

“ It provided that every Creek citizen should have an allotment of 160 acres of the tribal lands, for which he should receive a patent conveying to him the tribal title; that land should be set apart for religious and educational institutions, for public buildings, and for cemetery purposes ”

“ The selector has not acquired title simply because he has selected land which he claims was at the time of selection vacant land open to settlement, nor does the filing of his deed conveying the land relinquished and the abstract of title with it show necessarily that he was the owner of the land as provided for by the statute. ”

“ If he desires to preëmpt, and by payment to Government of $1.25 per acre for public land outside the limits of railroad and wagon-road grants, or $2.50 per acre for land within those limits, to obtain an immediate title, he must be sure that he does not fall within the two exceptions; for no one can acquire a right of preëmption who is the proprietor of three hundred and twenty acres of land in any State or Territory, nor can any one who quits or abandons his residence on his own land to reside on the public land in the same State or Territory. ”

“ See Revised Statutes, title xxxii. chap. 6, sects. 2318-2352. But in doing this it has not parted with the title to the land, except in cases where the land has been sold in accordance with the provisions of the law on that subject. ”

“ For cultivated land, twenty years, uninterrupted, is enough. For uncultivated, thirty. Art. 5. So that, when this decree went into effect, the applicant's father was owner of the land by the very terms of the decree. But, it is said, the object of this law was to require the adjustment or registration proceedings that it described, and in that way to require every one to get a document of title or lose his land. ”

“ The purpose of filing a map of definite location is to enable the land department to designate the lands passing under the grant; and, when a map of such a line is filed, full information is given, and, so far as that line may legally extend, the law perfects the title. It surely cannot be that a company must determine at its peril the extent to which its grant may go, or that a mistake in such determination works a forfeiture of all its right to lands.' 146 U.S. 570, 596, 13 Sup. ”

“ All lands, including submerged lands, and all waters within the boundaries of this Monument are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from entry, location, selection, sale or other disposition under the public land laws, other than exchange. ”

“ Eleven thousand acres of fertile hill and dale, sinking and swelling gently, so as to attract all the benignity of sun or breeze—not more densely wooded than is common on our own western shores, and watered to an ornamental perfection—truly on any civilized land, such is a goodly heritage. ”

“ Said the court: 'In no just sense can lands be said to be public lands after they have been entered at the land-office, and a certificate of entry obtained. If public lands before the entry, after it they are private property. ”

“ That citizens of the United States, and persons of certain specified qualifications, may file with the register and receiver of any land-district in which desert land is situated, a declaration of intention under oath, to reclaim within three years thereafter, by irrigation, a tract of desert land, surveyed or unsurveyed, not exceeding one section; and that upon payment of twenty-five cents per acre the applicant shall acquire an inchoate right thereto. ”

“ It is obviously the main purpose of the section to declare, that after the lands are surveyed they shall be subject to sale, according to the general land system of the government; and, secondly, to subject them to the right of pre-emption as defined by the act of 1841, and to extend that right to lands unsurveyed as well as to those surveyed. ”

“ That all lands exclusive of timber lands and mineral lands which will not, without irrigation, produce some agricultural crop, shall be deemed desert lands, within the meaning of this act, which fact shall be ascertained by proof of two or more credible witnesses under oath, whose affidavits shall be filed in the land office in which said tract of land may be situated. ”

“ From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value. ”

“ Those acts also provide that when, in the opinion of the president, 'a departure from the ordinary method of surveying land on any river, lake, bayou or watercourse, would promote the public interest,' the land may be surveyed, and sold in tracts of 2 acres in width, fronting on any such water, and running back the depth of 40 acres. ”

“ A common field lot, as intended by said act of Congress, is a piece of land of larger or smaller dimensions, as the case may be, according to ancient cultivation, lying alongside of, and parallel to, other similar pieces of land, and claimed or cultivated under the protection of a common fence by those who inhabited said towns or villages prior to the 20th December, 1803; and said pieces of land might not have been conceded or surveyed by any French or Spanish authority, or surveyed officially by the United States as a common field lot. ”

“ Access to the open area, as its name suggests, is not likewise restricted to the general public. The open area is primarily rangeland, agricultural land, and land used for residential and commercial development. ”

“ As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. ”

“ The owner of a piece of land, who had built a house or inclosed 20 or 40 acres of it, had the benefit of this universal custom, as well as the party who owned no land. Everybody used the open, uninclosed country which produced nutritious grasses as a public common or which their horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep could run and graze. ”

“ Land was the object which invited the greater number of these people to cross the mountain, for as the saying then was, "It was to be had here for taking up ;" that is, building a cabin and raising a crop of grain, however small, of any kind, entitled the occupant to four hundred acres of land, and a preemption right to one thousand acres more ad joining, to be secured by a land office warrant. This right was to take effect if there happened to be so much vacant land or any part thereof, adjoining the tract secured by the settlement right. ”

“ The typical continental countryside is that of tiny white-washed or wooden broad-eaved cottages, freely scattered over a region of fruit and flowers and close-tilled coveted land, which, in fact, is one large garden. The record of the great landowners of this country is of vast accumulations of acres: aggregations of whole counties, or estates dotted over many counties, each organised on the same plan of inherited feudal tradition. ”

“ Landmarks shall be erected between each lot, trees planted along the dividing line, a record of distribution among the settlers shall be made, containing the number of tracts, the names of the settlers to whom allotted, giving each a sheet or plot of his tract, which shall be his title in future, to remain in his possession, to be consulted without the necessity of resorting to the record itself. ”

“ Let our government instead take over all private, state, or federal unproductive lands, whether it is fertile, arid or marsh. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agriculture Economics on federal rural lands, on page 7, shows that the federal lands, swamps and marshes are 3,000,000 acres, barren and brush land 40,000,000 acres, non-forested range land 234,000,000 acres, crop land 4,000,000 acres ”

“ Conceding that the hills or mountains mentioned in the decree of confirmation as the northern boundary are really upon the east, and form the eastern boundary, and that where a grant is described as bounded by hills and mountains the line runs along the base, and not the summit, of the hills, it does not appear that the land in controversy was not within the boundaries of the grant, as originally made and confirmed. ”

“ He consolidated the land laws, and added provisions which gave a decided impetus to the settlement of land in many districts and helped working men near large centres to obtain small areas on village settlements. ”

“ Is it not marvellous that there should be land owned by the people and yet that we should have to discover this momentous fact from a few casual phrases occurring in three documents of the ninth and tenth centuries? Are we to suppose that whenever the king is giving away land, this land is the land of the people? Why do not the charters say so? Repeatedly the king speaks of the land that he gives as ‘my land’ (terram iuris mei) , and this too in charters which state that the witan give their consent to the grant. ”

“ Gored acres. No man's land.
Two other small details marking the open field system require only to be simply mentioned. Corners of the fields which, from their shape, could not be cut up into the usual acre or half-acre strips, were sometimes divided into tapering strips pointed at one end, and called 'gores,' or 'gored acres.' In other cases little odds and ends of unused land remained, which from time immemorial were called 'no man's land,' or 'any one's land,' or 'Jack's land,' as the case might be.
Hitchin, Purwell Field. ”

“ A series of measures shall be taken in order to avoid subsequent disputes over land, including the establishment of a register of rural land, the promulgation of a law on succession and, in the longer term, the conduct of a cadastral survey of rural land ”

“ His land is good, and prettily situated, with plenty of beaver meadow and a sprinkling of rock, and also a very picturesque waterfall, where, in coming years, he can have a mill. I have the adjoining hundred acres, good flat land for cultivation, but not so picturesque as any of the other lots, which I regret, though [45] others envy me the absence of rock. My land lies between C——s’ and the two hundred acres belonging to your brother-in-law, whose very pretty situation I have already described. ”

“ Subsequent alterations in its surface, due to erosion and other factors, gave rise to the present uplands and lowlands, which have been of determining influence in the peopling of the section, the rugged uplands offering so hard a subsistence that they were nowhere willingly chosen for settlement so long as land might still be had in the lowlands. ”