Opinion of the Court.

was, and ever since has remained, a citizen of the State of Arkansas; and that at the same time Ann E. Cameron and J. D. Cameron were citizens of the State of Mississippi; Mary F. Thompson and J. A. Thompson, and J. E. Price, were citizens of the State of Texas; E. J. Morton, L. W. Morton, L. C. Cobb, and R. W. Cobb, were citizens of the State of Alabama; and Gasken Price, Wm. Price, Lawler Price, and Leila Price, were citizens of the State of Tennessee; and that the parties named were all the complainants in said cause.

STATE OF TENNESSEE,

County of Shelby.

A. HODGES.

Personally appeared [before] the undersigned, notary public for said county and State, Asa Hodges, who made oath that the statements in the foregoing affidavit are true.

Subscribed and sworn to before [me] this 20th day of April,

1888.

[SEAL.]

J. E. DILLARD,
Notary Public.

With this affidavit they filed a brief in support of the jurisdiction of the court.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

While this petition sets forth the citizenship of Hodges to be in the State of Arkansas, both at the commencement of the suit and at the time of the application for removal, it does not state that of any of the complainants, but merely says "that none of the complainants are or were at that time citizens of said State of Arkansas," nor have we been able to find in the record any evidence, allegation or statement as to the citizenship of any of them. That the defendant, Hodges, was a citizen of Arkansas, in connection with the fact that none of the complainants were citizens of that State, is not sufficient to give jurisdiction in a Circuit Court of the United States. Brown v. Keene, 8 Pet. 112, 115.

The adverse party must be a citizen of some other named

Opinion of the Court.

State than Arkansas, or an alien. All the complainants might be residents and citizens of the District of Columbia, or of any Territory, and they might not be citizens of the State of Tennessee where the suit was brought, or indeed, of any State in the Union. A citizen of a Territory, or of the District of Columbia, can neither bring nor sustain a suit on the ground of citizenship, in one of the Circuit Courts. Barney v. Baltimore, 6 Wall. 280.

This court has always been very particular in requiring a distinct statement of the citizenship of the parties, and of the particular State in which it is claimed, in order to sustain the jurisdiction of those courts; and inasmuch as the only citizenship specifically averred and set out in the case before us is that of the defendant, Hodges, at whose instance the cause was removed, and as that is the only ground upon which the removal was placed, it seems clear that the Circuit Court did not have jurisdiction of it, and that the suit should have been dismissed or remanded for that reason. Robertson v. Cease, 97 U. S. 646. The allegation which was made in that case, that Cease, who was the plaintiff, in the action in the Circuit Court for the Western District of Texas, "resides in the county of Mason and State of Illinois," was held not to be a sufficient averment of his citizenship in Illinois. See, also, Godfrey v. Terry, 97 U. S. 171.

This court has uniformly acted upon the principle that in order to protect itself from collusive agreements between parties who wish to litigate their controversies in the federal courts, it would, on its own motion, take the objection of the want of jurisdiction in the Circuit Court, especially as regards citizenship. Hilton v. Dickinson, 108 U. S. 165; Morgan's Executor v. Gay, 19 Wall. 81.

We have considered the application of Hodges, the defendant in error, to supply the want of averments in regard to the citizenship of the complainants in this suit. The difficulty here, however, does not relate to the jurisdiction of this court, in regard to which evidence by affidavit has sometimes been received where the defect was as to the amount in controversy, and perhaps in relation to some other point. The juris

Syllabus.

diction of this court in the present case is undoubted, but, as the previous remarks in this opinion show, the Circuit Court never had jurisdiction of it; and while we may be authorized to reverse the decree so rendered we have no power to amend the record so as to give jurisdiction to that court by proceedings here. The case in this court must be tried upon the record made in the Circuit Court. In this instance there has been a removal from a tribunal of a state into a Circuit Court of the United States, and there is no precedent known to us which authorizes an amendment to be made, even in the Circuit Court, by which grounds of jurisdiction may be made to appear which were not presented to the state court on the motion for removal. In fact, under the fifth section of the act of March 3, 1875, it being manifest upon the face of the affidavit or petition for removal in the present suit that the case had been improperly removed into the Circuit Court, it was the duty of that court at all times and at any time during its pendency before it to have remanded the case to the tribunal of the State where it originated. We can do no more, however, than to reverse the action of the court below from which this appeal was taken, because it had no jurisdiction of the case.

The decree in this case is reversed for want of jurisdiction in the Circuit Court, and the case remanded for further proceedings.

CULBERTSON v. THE H. WITBECK COMPANY.

ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN.

The statutes of Michigan require the attestation of two witnesses to the grantor's signature. A deed of husband and wife was offered in evidence, the attestation to which was: "Signed, sealed, and delivered in presence of S. W. for" the husband; "W. H. R., G. H. for" the wife; and there was a certificate that the word half' in the twelfth line was

Counsel for Plaintiff in Error.

interlined before signing S. W., E. W." E. W. signing this certificate with S. W. was the justice of the peace who took the acknowledgment, and his certificate of acknowledgment stated that he knew the person who made the acknowledgment to be the person who executed the instrument. Held, that the execution of the deed was proved, and it was properly admitted in evidence.

A certificate by a master in chancery and notary public in New Jersey, taking an acknowledgment there of a deed of land in Michigan that he is "satisfied that the parties making the acknowledgment are the grantors in the within deed of conveyance." is a sufficient certificate that they were the same persons as those named as grantors in the deed; but if defective in this respect, the defect is cured under the laws of Michigan by a certificate from the proper official that the person taking the acknowledgment was "a master in chancery and notary public," and that "the annexed instrument is executed and the proof of acknowledgment thereto taken in accordance with the laws of the State of New Jersey." The will of a citizen of New York, dying in the city of New York, was admitted to probate there. A duly authenticated copy being presented for probate in Michigan, notice to all parties interested by publication was ordered, and on proof of such publication, and after hearing and proof, the instrument was admitted to probate in Michigan, and ancillary letters were issued. Held, that the parties were properly brought before the court by publication, and that the will was properly admitted to probate.

An objection as to the sufficiency of a certificate of a register of deeds to an instrument offered in evidence which was not made at the trial cannot be taken here.

In Michigan a declaration of trust which declares that the parties executing it hold the property in trust for themselves and two other persons is an express trust, and under the laws of that State the whole estate in law and in equity is vested in the trustees.

When a party to an action of ejectment in Michigan sets up a tax title, several years old, it is competent for the other party, after showing by the official records that an illegal expenditure of public money was ordered, sufficient under the laws of the State to vitiate the whole tax if paid from it, to prove by parol evidence that the sum so ordered to be paid was paid out of the moneys raised by the tax in question.

De

EJECTMENT. Verdict and judgment for the plaintiff. fendant sued out this writ of error. The case is stated in the opinion.

Mr. D. H. Ball and Mr. Walter H. Smith for plaintiff in Mr. A. T. Britton and Mr. A. B. Browne were with them on the brief.

error.

Opinion of the Court.

Mr. Edward Cahill for defendant in error. Mr. B. J. Brown was with him on the brief.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an action of ejectment, originally brought in the Circuit Court for the County of Marquette, in the State of Michigan, by The H. Witbeck Company, plaintiff, against William C. Culbertson, defendant.

The object of the suit was to recover certain lands situated in the county of Marquette, to which the plaintiff claimed title in fee. The case was removed to the Circuit Court of the United States, where a trial was had which resulted in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. This, as a matter of right, was set aside, upon motion, under the law of Michigan, and a new trial granted, which also resulted in a verdict and judgment in favor of the plaintiff. It is this which the present writ of error brings up for review.

During the progress of the trial the plaintiff established title by various conveyances, beginning with patents from the United States, in William A. Pratt. As a link in the chain of title from Pratt, the plaintiff offered in evidence the record of a deed from Pratt and wife to Still Manning and William Wright, which was executed and acknowledged in the State of Michigan. This was objected to by the defendant upon the ground that it was attested by only one witness as to the signature of William A. Pratt. The instrument was, however, admitted in evidence notwithstanding the objection, to which the defendant excepted. This ruling is made the ground of the first assignment of error.

The deed offered in evidence was signed, acknowledged and recorded according to the laws of the State of Michigan. It is admitted that there was one witness to the signature of Mr. Pratt and two witnesses to the signature of Mrs. Pratt, but it is denied that there was a second witness to the signature of the former. The part of the record containing the testimonium is as follows: