Bill in Equity, under c. 48, Laws of 1888, alleging that the plaintiff is in possession of a tract of land described in Boscawen, claiming a freehold therein. The defendants claim that the land is a legally existing highway. The plaintiff prays that the title be determined by the court, and for an injunction. Facts found by the court.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1891-12-05
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 2007
6 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
¶1
The exception to the admission of the transcript of the town records of what purports to be a return of a highway laid out to Clement’s ferry, because the return is not signed by any one, is not sustained. In
Willey
v.
Portsmouth,
35 N. H.
*113
303, it is held that reputation, such as recitals in ancient records and grants, is competent evidence of the laying out of ancient highways. The record was a public declaration that a highway had been laid out in the place described; and after the lapse of more than one hundred years the presumption is that it was legally laid out. This record, in connection with the other records produced and the evidence that the road as laid out was used more or less extensively as a public highway until 1876, was evidence sufficient to sustain a finding that the highway was legally laid out.
State
v. Morse, 50 N. H. 9;
Thompson
v. Major, 58 N. H. 242;
Plummer
v. Ossipee, 59 N. H. 55;
State
v.
Vale
Mills, 63 N. H. 4. The facts found in the case also tend to show a legal highway, with gates at the King street entrance, by twenty years’ public use.
