I was working on researching the history of a tract containing 26 labors of land (about 4606 acres) that was surveyed in 1846 by virtue of a 1st Class Headright Certificate. The patent was issued that same year to a fellow who claimed to be the assignee of the land certificate, meaning ownership of the certificate had been transferred to him and he had had it located by a surveyor to appropriate a tract containing 26 labors from the public domain of the State of Texas.
The assignee sold 1/3 of a league (8-1/3 labors of land) five years later in 1851 and about that time the original grantee executed a deed for 800 acres out of the 26 labors (to which he had no record title).
Then he died and there were no further conveyances until 1875. That was the year that a dispute apparently developed between the heirs of the original grantee of the headright certificate and the patentee/assignee of the certificate. To clarify the state of title, the assignee executed a deed in favor of the heirs of the original grantee and, among the recitals, explained that he had merely been assigned the certificate for the purposes of locating it, i.e. having it surveyed, and was to receive 1/3 of a league for his efforts. That was a 32% fee for surveying and paying the relatively small patenting fees.
There were two parties to the dispute, it would appear (I haven't pulled the District Court Minutes from 1875 yet) and we know what their legal expenses were. One side paid 25% of his land to his attorney in exchange for legal services and the other paid 33%.
So, start with a land certificate good for 4606 acres. By the time it was surveyed and patent issued, the original grantee was down to 3129 acres.
To recover their interest, his heirs paid their attorney 1/3 of whatever land they might recover. So that left them with 1552 acres (after the 800 acres was excepted). A few years later, one of the four children of the original grantee sold his interest that he figured amounted to 220 acres. That's almost as bad as lottery winners.
My how the land shrinks when surveyors, attorneys, and no family pla
Thank the good Lord for universal public education. The poor and uneducated never stood a chance back then.
I've always understood that there is Colonial Surveying, Public Land Surveying and then there's Texas Surveying.
Dang a 95% loss of property just to finally get to own it!!
Kent, one question for you regarding your writing style. You happened to do something in your text that i find annoying in anyone's writing; "....meaning ownership of the certificate had been transferred to him and he had had it located by a surveyor to appropriate a tract containing 26 labors from the public domain of the State of Texas."
Is a second "had" necessary? I know that the attempt to make it past tense, but is it really necessary? The simple phrase "had it located" accomplishes the intent without repeating a "had."
Just asking...
Don
> Kent, one question for you regarding your writing style. You happened to do something in your text that i find annoying in anyone's writing; "....meaning ownership of the certificate had been transferred to him and he had had it located by a surveyor to appropriate a tract containing 26 labors from the public domain of the State of Texas."
>
> Is a second "had" necessary? I know that the attempt to make it past tense, but is it really necessary? The simple phrase "had it located" accomplishes the intent without repeating a "had."
Technically it's not an attempt to make it past tense, it's the plural perfect of "have"
> > Is a second "had" necessary? I know that the attempt to make it past tense, but is it really necessary? The simple phrase "had it located" accomplishes the intent without repeating a "had."
>
>
> Technically it's not an attempt to make it past tense, it's the plural perfect of "have"
Thank you, James. If there is one thing that isn't tolerated on BeerLeg.com, it has to be poor grammar. :>
If the phrase was "he had done it" you wouldn't shorten it to "he done it". "had had" is kind of awkward but sometimes unavoidable.
Right, Kent. I would hate to see this forum succumb to bad grammar and spelling.
James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher
Surveying and Legal Fees of Early Texas> your link Jim
Pluperfect
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The pluperfect (from Latin plus quam perfectum more than perfect), also called past perfect in English, is a grammatical combination of past tense with the perfect, itself a combination of tense and aspect, that exists in most Indo-European languages. It is used to refer to an event that had continuing relevance to a past time. Comrie[1]:p.64 classifies the pluperfect as an absolute-relative tense because it absolutely (not by context) establishes a deixis (the past) and places the action relative to the deixis (before it).
In the sentence "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely." (from Victor Frankls' Man's Search for Meaning), "had thought" and "had reached" are examples of the pluperfect. It refers to an event (a man thinks he is reaching his limit), which takes place before another event (the man realizes that he has no limit), and was still relevant at the time of the later event. Because that second, subsequent event is itself a past event and the past tense is used to refer to it ("a man...now found"), the pluperfect is needed to make it clear that the first event (reaching the limit) has taken place even earlier in the past.
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I still think it is unnecessary to use "had had" in any case........
> Thank the good Lord for universal public education. The poor and uneducated never stood a chance back then.
It's looking as if the attorneys who cut themselves in for a fee amounting to a 33% undivided interest in the remainder of the land to which the heirs could establish title didn't even need to take it to court. That's really good pay for writing letters. Some Nigerian somewhere may have taken a lesson from that example.
Surveying and Legal Fees of Early Texas> your link Jim
Don, why not rewrite the sentence to describe a past event (the issuance of the patent) that was necessarily preceded by two other events, i.e. the transfer of the land certificate and the location of the certificate by a surveyor?
> The patent was issued that same year to a fellow who claimed to be the assignee of the land certificate, meaning ownership of the certificate had been transferred to him and he had had it located by a surveyor to appropriate a tract containing 26 labors from the public domain of the State of Texas.
Surveying and Legal Fees of Early Texas> your link Jim
Had had is ok if you stutter. I think it could be correct grammar.
Wasn't it Wade or Bum Phillips who said to a Yankee, "You talk faster than
I can listen?
