Ferguson v. Johnson

<p>1. Land Certificate — Inheritance Where Grant is Based on Mexican Law-Aliens.</p> <p>W. removed from the United States to Texas, then a part of Mexico, in 1831, and died here in 1834. After Texas became a Republic, it issued, on the application of her administrator, a certificate to lands which were patented in her name in. 1841. Held, that in the absence of proof to the contrary, it will be presumed that the certificate issued by virtue of the right thereto which W. had acquired under the Mexican colonization law, and that her heirship, as to the land, was to be determined by the laws anterior to the Constitution of the Republic, under which aliens could not inherit.</p> <p>2. Descent — Citizenship of Mexico — Evidence Insufficient.</p> <p>Evidence that one born in the United States of parents who were citizens thereof came to Texas, then a part of Mexico, with his widowed mother in 1831, left Texas in 1835, was married in Louisiana, and again lived in Texas in 1859 to 1863, does not show that he acquired citizenship in Mexico, and was not as to the Mexican law an alien at the date of his mother’s death in 1834.</p>