Jacob Kissell, Plaintiff in Error. v. the Board of the President and Directors of the St. Louis Public Schools

In this case, the school commissioners were plaintiffs in their corporate capacity, and, in order to eject the defendant below, were bound to produce a legal title to the land claimed. Their title depends on three acts of congress, passed in 1812, 1824, and 1831. The act of 1812 confirmed, to private owners at St. Louis and other villages in Missouri, town lots, out-lots, and common-field lots, in, adjoining, and belonging to the towns, and it also confirmed to the towns their commons. This act made it the duty of the principal surveyor to survey, or cause to be surveyed and marked, (where the same had not already been done according to law,) the out-boundary lines of the said several towns and villages, so as to include the out-lots, common-field lots, and commons thereto respectively belonging.