Where defendant's claim to land formerly part of the public
domain is based on his grantor's rights under the statutes
governing the disposition thereof, and sustained by the
construction given to such statutes by the state court, the
decision against the plaintiff involves the denial of a federal
right as asserted by him.
Under §§ 2291, 2292, Rev.Stat., no rights accrue to the wife of
an entryman who dies before the entry is perfected, and nothing
passes under the inheritance laws of the state in which the land is
situated.
Under § 3 of the Act of May 14, 1880, providing that settlers
might file homestead entries and that their rights should relate
back to date of settlement, the inchoate right is initiated by the
settlement, and the perfected right, when evidenced by patent,
finally obtained relates back to that date, but no vested right is
obtained until full compliance with the provisions of the act.
Where a statute of the United States gives definite rights on
the happening of certain contingencies, no rights can vest until
such contingencies happen, and unless the wife survives the
entryman and becomes his widow, she acquires no rights to the land,
whether the entry was made before or after her marriage to the
entryman.
Prior to patent, the rights of the entryman are essentially
inchoate and exclusively within the operation of the laws of the
United States, and where those laws designate the beneficiaries of
a compliance therewith, state laws are excluded.
McCune v.
Essig, 199 U. S. 382.
An entryman, prior to marriage, settled on the land but made his
entry after marriage; prior to perfection and patent, his wife died
leaving children; after perfecting and obtaining a patent, he sold.
Held that he perfected the entry in his own right and
under §§ 2291, 2293, his wife had acquired no interest therein
which descended to her children under the law of the state.
129 La. 484 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the construction of the Homestead Entry
Law of the United States and the rights of an entryman and of his
wife, are stated in the opinion.
Page 227 U. S. 369
MR. JUSTICE McKENNA delivered the opinion of the Court.
Action brought in the First Judicial District Court of Louisiana
in and for the Parish of Caddo by plaintiff in error (and as he was
plaintiff below, we shall so call him) against the defendants in
error (herein referred to as defendants) for the recognition of
Effie Bell Wadkins, represented by him as her natural tutor, as
owner of an undivided one-half interest in and to the S.E. 1/4 of §
3, Township 20 North, Range 16 West, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, and
to put her in possession thereof, and to require the defendants to
pay for all the oil and others minerals extracted therefrom, and,
as tutor of said minor, to have judgment against them
in
solido for the market value of one-half of all the oil, gas,
and other minerals that have been produced up to date, and which
may be produced.
Judgment was entered recognizing the minor as the owner of an
undivided one-half interest in the land, as prayed, and for
$86,328.24, the value of the oil extracted therefrom, with interest
and costs. The right of the minor to a further accounting was also
reserved. The judgment was reversed by the supreme court of the
state. 129 La. 484.
The question in the case is whether a homestead entry made by
the father of the minor is community property, her mother having
died before the perfection of the entry.
The facts, as taken from the opinion of the supreme court, are
as follows: in June, 1893, W. H. Wadkins, father of Effie, the
minor, settled on the land with the view of acquiring it as a
homestead. On February 25, 1895, he made application for and
obtained a preliminary homestead entry at the proper local land
office. At the end of five years, to-wit, on September 8, 1898, he
made final proof and secured a final homestead entry, upon which he
subsequently obtained a patent.
Page 227 U. S. 370
Wadkins married the mother of the minor on June 24, 1894; she
died December 5, 1896. Two children were born of this marriage, one
of whom died at the age of two years; the other is the
plaintiff.
The defendants are oil and gas companies operating in the Caddo
oil and gas fields, the Producers Oil Company operating under a
lease from the other company. The property has produced and is
still producing a large amount of oil.
A motion is made to dismiss. As pertinent to the motion, the
answer of the Producers Oil Company must be considered. It alleges
that Wadkins actually settled upon the land on or before December
12, 1893, under the homestead laws of the United States, the land
then being public land of the United States, and subject to
settlement and entry under those laws, and did not marry the mother
of plaintiff until several months later; that the patent was issued
as early as December 12, 1898, thereby fixing and determining the
date of settlement as being at least five years prior thereto; that
defendant is the lessee of its codefendant, who claims to own and
does own the land in fee simple by regular conveyance from Wadkins,
and that defendant therefore claims a right, title, privilege, and
immunity under the statutes of the United States, and particularly
under the Acts of Congress governing homestead entries on the
public lands of the United States, and that, under those statutes,
plaintiff has no right, title, or interest in the lands.
The answer of the Atlanta & Shreveport Oil & Gas Company
alleges substantially the same facts, and that "all allegations of
its codefendant as to federal questions are adopted and made part"
of defendant's answer.
It will appear in our discussion of the case that the federal
right thus invoked was passed on by the supreme court of the state,
and was an element in its decision against plaintiff. The motion to
dismiss is therefore overruled.
Page 227 U. S. 371
Under the laws of the United States, every person who is the
head of a family, and having certain other qualifications not
necessary to mention, shall be entitled to enter a quarter-section
or less of the public lands.
By §§ 2291 and 2292 of the Revised Statutes, it is provided as
follows:
"SEC. 2291. No certificate, however, shall be given, or patent
issued therefor, until the expiration of five years from the date
of such entry, and if at the expiration of such time, or at any
time within two years thereafter, the person making such entry, or,
if he be dead, his widow, or, in case of her death, his heirs or
devisee, or, in case of a widow making such entry, her heirs or
devisee, in case of her death, proves by two credible witnesses
that he, she, or they have resided upon or cultivated the same for
the term of five years immediately succeeding the time of filing
the affidavit, and makes affidavit that no part of such land has
been alienated, except as provided in section twenty-two hundred
and eighty-eight, and that he, she, or they will bear true
allegiance to the government of the United States; then, in such
case, he, she, or they, if at that time citizens of the United
States, shall be entitled to a patent as in other cases provided by
law. . . ."
"SEC. 2292. In case of the death of both father and mother
leaving an infant child or children under twenty-one years of age,
the right and fee shall inure to the benefit of such infant child
or children. . . ."
In
McCune v. Essig, 199 U. S. 382, we
decided that the beneficiaries of the statute were (1) the
entryman, (2) his widow, she performing and proving he performance
of the conditions, to-wit, residence and cultivation of the land
for the time prescribed, and (3) -- § 2292 -- a child or children
under twenty-one years of age. And the rights are independent, or,
in other words and in illustration, as we said in
McCune v.
Essig, the homestead claimant
"may reside upon and cultivate the land, and, by doing so,
Page 227 U. S. 372
is entitled to a patent. If he die, his widow is given the right
of residence and cultivation, and 'shall be entitled to a patent as
in other cases.' He can make no devolution of the land against her.
The statute which gives him a right gives her a right. She is as
much a beneficiary of the statute as he."
Her rights therefore are derived from the statute, but
necessarily depend upon the contingency mentioned -- that is, his
death before perfecting his entry. If she die before then, if she
does not become a widow before then, necessarily no right vests in
her under the statute. And such was the fact in the case at bar.
The mother of the minor died before any right could accrue to her.
To express it another way, the entry of Wadkins was perfected in
his own right.
But it is said that his right has relation to the date of his
entry, and must be considered as having vested then. A like
contention was rejected in
McCune v. Essig. A title
derived from a widow was there sustained against the contention
that, by the entry of her husband, the land involved had become
community property under the state law, and an undivided one half
thereof passed at his death to his daughter. The ruling is directly
in point.
It appears that Wadkins settled on the land before his marriage,
but did not make a formal homestead entry of it until after his
marriage, and it is hence argued that an inchoate right vested in
him by his entry only, and that, the entry having been "during the
regime of the community of acquets and gains incidental to the
marriage," the patent, under the jurisprudence of Louisiana,
conveyed the "full title of the government to the community." And
this, it is contended, the supreme court decided to be the law of
the state, but considered that it could not be applied in the case
at bar because the court erroneously decided that Wadkins'
settlement, which occurred before his marriage, was the
commencement of
Page 227 U. S. 373
his right, and not the entry at the land office, which occurred
after his marriage.
The court did decide that the right of Wadkins began with his
settlement, and not by his entry, and applied the law of the state
in accordance with that view, yielding to it, as the court said,
"as an effect of the Act of Congress of 1880" and of the codal
provisions of the state "touching the retrospective operation of
the accomplishment of suspensive conditions."
The provision of the Act of 1880 referred to is as follows:
"SEC. 3. That any settler who has settled, or who shall
hereafter settle, on any of the public lands of the United States,
whether surveyed or unsurveyed, with the intention of claiming the
same under the homestead laws, shall be allowed the same time to
file his homestead application and perfect his original entry in
the United States Land Office as is now allowed to settlers under
the preemption laws to put their claims on record,
and his
right shall relate back to the date of settlement, the same as if
he settled under the preemption laws."
(Italics ours.) 21 Stat 140, c. 89.
The supreme court, to sustain its view, cited
Maddox v.
Burnham, 156 U. S. 546;
St. Paul, Minneapolis & Man. Ry. Co. v. Donohue,
210 U. S. 21.
In
Sturr v. Beck, 133 U. S. 541,
133 U. S. 547,
the Court said, through Chief Justice Fuller, that
"the ruling of the Land Department has been that if the
homestead settler shall fully comply with the law as to continuous
residence and cultivation, the settlement defeats all claims
intervening between its date and the date of filing his homestead
entry, and in making final proof, his five years of residence and
cultivation will commence from the date of actual settlement."
In
Maddox v. Burnham, the Act of 1880 was commented on,
and it was decided that, by that act, "for the first time, the
right of a party entering land under the
Page 227 U. S. 374
homestead law was made to relate back to the time of
settlement."
In
St. P., Minn. & Man. Ry. Co. v. Donohue,
210 U. S. 30, it
was held it was not until May 14, 1880, that a homestead entry was
permitted to be made upon unsurveyed public lands, and,
"for the first time, both as to the surveyed and unsurveyed
public lands, the right of the homestead settler was allowed to be
initiated by and to arise from the act of settlement, and not from
the record of the claim made in the land office."
There can be no doubt that Wadkins' inchoate right was initiated
by his settlement, and that, as between him and any intervening
claimant, his perfected right evidenced by the patent related back
to the time of his settlement. (
Shepley v. Cowan,
91 U. S. 330,
91 U. S. 338;
Weyerhauser v. Hoyt, 219 U. S. 380,
219 U. S.
388-390), but he did not acquire any vested interest in
the land until he had fully complied with the provisions of the
homestead law and submitted proof thereof at the local office.
Prior to that time, his right was essentially inchoate and
exclusively within the operation of the laws of the United States,
and those laws, as we have seen, fully dealt with the subject of
who should be the beneficiary of a compliance with them, thereby
excluding state laws from that field. This is a manifest deduction
from
McCune v. Essig. There might be a curious and
confusing result from an opposite ruling, as pointed out by the
supreme court of the state in its first opinion. Suppose Wadkins
had married again and died before perfecting his claim. Could his
widow have continued the required residence upon and cultivation of
the land? And if so, in what right -- her own, or that of the first
wife, or in both rights? Section 2291 precludes such confusion. It
is a definite grant of rights, and who shall be its beneficiaries
are explicitly designated, and upon what contingencies, and upon
the performance of what conditions. Until such contingencies
happen, and until
Page 227 U. S. 375
such performance, no rights vest. It follows that the mother of
Effie Bell Wadkins acquired no interest in the land.
Judgment affirmed.