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71 Miss. 379

Pearson v. Miller

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1893

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1893-10-15

Prom the circuit court of. the second district of Panola uounty. Hon. Eugene Johnson, Judge. Appellant, Pearson, an unmarried man and practicing lawyer, residing in the town of Batesville, Miss., occupied alone the back room of his law-office as a sleeping apartment, taking his meals at a hotel. He owned a house and lot about ■one hundred and twenty-five feet from his office, occupied by his aged and dependent grandfather, whom he supported.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1893-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently January 1937

1 district · 2 state decisions

2018931900191019201930decided

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.

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Woods, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2A householder may be said to be a person owning or holding and occupying a house; and a family may be defined to be a collection of persons living together under one head. A householder having a family may be characterized as the head of a family occupying a house and living together in one domestic establishment. lie need not be a husband or a father, nor need the family over which he has headship and control be kept together as a unit continuously. The education of children, the illness of any member of the family requiring change of climate, or mere absence, however protracted, if only temporary, for pleasure or recreation, will not, of course, dissolve the family relationship or break up the household.

¶3Applying these definitions, and their obvious limitations, to the facts contained in the record of the case at bar, it seems clear to us that the appellant is not a householder having a family. He holds and occupies, as an office and sleeping apartment, one house; his grandfather occupies another and distinct dwelling. The appellant owns this dwelling so occupied by the grandfather, and the grandfather owns its furnishings and furniture. The appellant employs the servant who lives with and cares for the grandfather, and supplies the table of the grandfather from a restaurant. The parties do not live together under the headship of the appellant as a collection of persons in one family; they occupy *382different houses; they take their meals at separate places, and there is only the pleasing and natural care and attention bestowed upon the ancestor by the descendant which instinct and honor prompt to. It is the case of the kind and thoughtful offspring providing for the temporal wants of the aged and dependent progenitor in furnishing him a comfortable abode with table comforts, but it is nothing more. The appellant is not a householder having a family dwelling in one domestic establishment, of which he has the headship and government.

¶4Affirmed.

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