UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE

1. The general rule that monuments control courses and distances reasserted in reference to lands situated in New Hampshire.

2. A well known tract of land, embraced in an old patent and long referred to by name in the laws of the state, containing settlements which had been subject to the census and tax laws, if called for in a subsequent grant made by the state, as the boundary of a new grant, is such a monument as will draw to it the limits of such subsequent grant, although its exterior lines were never actually run and located on the ground, and the state will be precluded from injecting a still later grant between the two prior ones.

3. The premises in a grant were described as beginning at a fixed point, and thence

"running east seven miles and one hundred and seventeen rods to Hart's Location; thence southerly by the westerly boundary of said location to a point so far south that a line drawn thence due south shall strike the northwest corner of the Town of Burton; thence south to said northwest corner of Burton; thence westerly,"

&c., to the beginning.

Held:

1. That if, when the grant was made, there was a tract well known as Hart's Location, lying easterly and in the vicinity of the land granted, and if it had a westerly boundary to which the granted tract could by any reasonable possibility extend, then Hart's Location was a monument which controlled the courses and distances of the survey, and this though the western boundary of Hart's location had never been actually surveyed on the ground, and though the northwest corner of Burton did not lie due south from any part of said western boundary.

2. That in such case the connection between the two monuments -- the western boundary of Hart's Location and the northwest corner of Burton -- would be the shortest line between them, though the course should be different from that named in the grant.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Court. clubjuris

Page 103 U. S. 317