Citations
- 57 Fla. 355
Full opinion text
Hocker, J.
On July u, 1907, appellant filed a bill in the Circuit Court of Jackson County against the appellee to cancel a certain deed executed to him by M. L. Dekle, trustee, as a cloud on the title of appellee to a certain one acre lot-near the town of Marianna in Jackson county, and praying that .he, his agents and servants be enjoined from trespassing thereon. Appellee filed a cross bill setting up his title and praying the cancellation of a certain deed to said one acre tract executed on the 5th of September, 1904, by Susan Bellamy and her husband, and for an injunction against trespassing by the appellant, her agents, servants, etc. The substantial facts set up in the cross 'bill were also' stated in the answer to the bill, replications were filed and a larg-e volume of testimony was taken. The testimony occupies nearly two hundred pages of the record, consisting mostly of the opinions of a large number of witnesses as to 'the location of the particular acre in dispute, and of divers acts of notorious adverse possession of the same by the respective litigants and those under whom they are supposed to claim for a number of years. This acre never enclosed, and with no building upon it of any sort, 'has apparently furnished during the past twenty years an almost incredible amount of firewood, poles, fence posts, light-wood, etc., to its several alleged owners, considering that it still seems to be a very well wooded piece of land. This litigation is sustained either by the great value of this single acre, or the gaudium certaminis which has always been a characteristic of a conquering race. One can feel his heart’s beats quicken and his spirit rise as he read's the details of this strenuous struggle. One party attempted to build -a fence, the other knocked it down. An arrest was made and the arrested party tried and acquitted, and the whole community seems to- have been kept in a state of excitement for a number of years. It was well perhaps for the peace of society that the court of -chancery was invoked to settle this controversy. Both parties claim to deraign title through Amanda S. Barkley (nee Bryan).
On the 3rd of July, 1858, William C. Bryan and wife conveyed to Amanda S. Bryan, her heirs, etc., the west ‘half of the northwest quarter of Section Four, Range Ten North and West. The appellant alleges in her bill that Amanda S. Barkley executed a deed of the one acre on the 22nd of August, 1877, to Martha Jane Burkett describing it therein as follows : “the following described land lying one mile wes-t of the town of Marianna being at the northeast corner of the land so- owned by her, and commencing at the road front of the house of Joseph W. Russ on the road leading from the town of Marianna to Campbellton, running thence seventy yards south, thence seventy-yards west, thence seventy, yards north, from thence seventy yards east to the point of beginning;” that Martha Jane Burkett,