A description of the estate conveyed by a deed drawn up in 19th-century Pennsylvania describes the property conveyed as being:
All those two certain tracts of land with stone messuage thereon erected.
That is definitely a phrase I have never seen before in the thousands of deeds conveying land in Texas that I've examined over the years. We have a mess of stone in some parts of the state, but no stone messuage, evidently.
From Black's Law Dictionary, I gather that stone messuage was equivalent to "land and improvements thereon", but had a more specific meaning in earlier English law of property.
We see it often in these parts, it is a dwelling house with the land around it. As opposed to a farm, woodlot, or tract of marsh.
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Kent McMillan, post: 444769, member: 3 wrote: From Black's Law Dictionary, I gather that stone messuage was equivalent to "land and improvements thereon", but had a more specific meaning in earlier English law of property.
I tend to see it used as a term more specific to the dwelling house since it was commonly used in the phrase "messuage and curtilage".
You boys keep talkin' like that and Mama's gonna wash yer mouth out with soap.
James Fleming, post: 444786, member: 136 wrote: I tend to see it used as a term more specific to the dwelling house since it was commonly used in the phrase "messuage and curtilage".
That would fit the etymology of "messuage" well since it evidently derives from Anglo-Norman French with the Latin word manere, to dwell, as a root. I suppose that a "stone messuage" was simply a way of describing a permanent fixture as opposed to a "wattle-and-daub messuage".
So, how did manere sire messuage?
Per the link below:
"From the misreading of the letter n as u in Old French mesnage (household), from Latin manere (to remain, dwell). Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (to remain), which also gave us manor, mansion, m??nage, immanent, permanent, menagerie, menial, and remain. Earliest documented use: 1490."
https://wordsmith.org/words/messuage.html
Kent McMillan, post: 444794, member: 3 wrote: So, how did manere sire messuage?
Per the link below:
"From the misreading of the letter n as u in Old French mesnage (household), from Latin manere (to remain, dwell). Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (to remain), which also gave us manor, mansion, m??nage, immanent, permanent, menagerie, menial, and remain. Earliest documented use: 1490."
You forgot another word derived from the root: manure.
" m??nure; Old English- definition: to dwell in lands south of the River Rouge; to lay upon the land and smell".
paden cash, post: 444799, member: 20 wrote: You forgot another word derived from the root: manure.
More correctly:
c. 1400, "to cultivate land," also "to hold property," from Anglo-French meynoverer, Old French manouvrer "to work with the hands, cultivate; carry out; make, produce," from Medieval Latin manuoperare (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=maneuver&allowed_in_frame=0&apos ;">maneuver (n.)). Sense of "work the earth" led to "put dung on the soil" (1590s) and to the current noun meaning "dung spread as fertilizer," which is first attested 1540s. Until late 18c., however, the verb still was used in a figurative sense of "to cultivate the mind, train the mental powers."
Kent McMillan, post: 444800, member: 3 wrote: More correctly:
c. 1400, "to cultivate land," also "to hold property," from Anglo-French meynoverer, Old French manouvrer "to work with the hands, cultivate; carry out; make, produce," from Medieval Latin manuoperare (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=maneuver&allowed_in_frame=0&apos ;">maneuver (n.)). Sense of "work the earth" led to "put dung on the soil" (1590s) and to the current noun meaning "dung spread as fertilizer," which is first attested 1540s. Until late 18c., however, the verb still was used in a figurative sense of "to cultivate the mind, train the mental powers."
Since this discussion forum is essentially a creation (albeit with a bar sinister in the pedigree of the present generation) of the Oklahoman Mark Deal, one can with perfect justification say that it was originally intended to manure the minds of his fellow Oklahoma surveyors.
Holy Cow, post: 444788, member: 50 wrote: You boys keep talkin' like that and Mama's gonna wash yer mouth out with soap.
Them archaic English terms are pretty important here. I'm working on a survey where the most recent description is from 1840 and the POB is a point on the 8th line of a deed from 1735.
Bet you see a lot of those written letters that look a lot like a script letter "f" but are really an "s" in the middle of a word. Those were pretty well absent from usage in 1865 when the original surveyors visited my community. Completely confufing to a silly affh0le.
Saw a plan the other day, said a property may be subject to flowage and mill rights of John Tuck, deeded 1629....
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Holy Cow, post: 444810, member: 50 wrote: Bet you see a lot of those written letters that look a lot like a script letter "f" but are really an "s" in the middle of a word. Those were pretty well absent from usage in 1865 when the original surveyors visited my community. Completely confufing to a silly affh0le.
I'm not going to say that you aren't confused, but I think that some conventions such as whether "ss" would be written "fs" or not, depended largely upon where the writer had grown up. There are plenty of examples of well-educated folks who had grown up in Tennessee and Kentucky (well, at least "educated") who moved to Texas in the 1850s and 60s and continued to write "issue" as "ifsue" well into the 1880s when the same convention had been abandoned by nearly everyone else wielding a pen in hand.
Kent McMillan, post: 444807, member: 3 wrote: bar sinister in the pedigree of the present generation
Are we the last generation who's baby photos weren't taken with a cell phone?
RADAR, post: 444877, member: 413 wrote: Are we the last generation who's baby photos weren't taken with a cell phone?
No
OK; how about a camera that took a roll of film?
Dave Karoly, post: 444881, member: 94 wrote: No
OK; how about a camera that took a roll of film?
RADAR, post: 444891, member: 413 wrote: OK; how about a camera that took a roll of film?
Or those cameras that used wet glass plates... before the easy-to-use dry glass plates came around-
The only superior evidence is that which you haven't yet found.
Holy Cow, post: 444810, member: 50 wrote: Bet you see a lot of those written letters that look a lot like a script letter "f" but are really an "s" in the middle of a word. Those were pretty well absent from usage in 1865 when the original surveyors visited my community. Completely confufing to a silly affh0le.
I saw a wanted poster for JW Booth. In cursive someone had written afsafsin. Funny rules on double ss.