Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1885 — Ownership of a Burial Lot. [ARTICLE]

Ownership of a Burial Lot.

—j. •* * The owner of a lot in Greenwood Cemetery, New York, had bought it as a burial place for the dead of his family. In it were buried one of his sons, his brother, and his wife’s parents. Large sums of money were spent both by him and his wife in improving and adorning the lot ul-1 erecting a monument on it. After all this had been done, the husband sold it to a stranger. Thereupon the wife brought suit against her husband and the purchaser to annul the sale and to have the lot restored to the family. The decision of the general term was in her favor. Justice Daniel said: “The property was acquired as a burial lot for the plaintiff and her husband and their family. It had been greatly improved, not only at his, but at her expense, and their family dead had been placed in it as their final resting place. It was bought by him for that purpose. These facts were sufficient to prevent the husband from selling it to a stranger, the sale to be followed by the removal of the bodies from the ground. It would be offensive to the moral sense, and therefore should not be sanctioned by the court, after these bodies had there been buried, to permit this property to be made the subject of speculative disposition, with permission of the purchaser to remove them from their resting place. Good order, public decency and a just regard for the repose of the remains of the dead require, under the facts of this case, that the judgment from which the appeal has been taken should be affirmed. ”