United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry. Co. v. Donohue, 210 U.S. 21 (1908)

St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba

Railway Company v. Donohue

No. 440

Submitted January 10, 1908

Decided May 4, 1908

210 U.S. 21

Syllabus

A homesteader who initiates a right to either surveyed or unsurveyed land and complies with the legal requirements may, when he enters the land, embrace in his claim land in contiguous quarter-sections if he does not exceed the quantity allowed by law and provided that his improvements are upon some portion of the tract, and that he does such acts as put the public upon notice as to the extent of his claim. Ferguson v. McLaughlin, 96 U. S. 174, distinguished.

Under the Land Grant Act of August 5, 1892, 27 Stat. 390, c. 382, the right of the railway company to select indemnity lands, nonmineral and not reserved and to which no adverse right or claim had attached or been initiated, does not include land which had been entered in good faith by a homesteader at the time of the supplementary selection, and, on a relinquishment's

Page 210 U. S. 22

being properly filed by the homesteader, the land becomes open to settlement, and the railway company is not entitled to the land under a selection filed prior to such relinquishment.

101 Minn. 239 affirmed.

The facts arc stated in the opinion.

Page 210 U. S. 24