The Paperwork Error That Challenged Seattle’s Property Claims
A legal dispute over a real estate deed in 1885 reveals how bureaucratic technicalities—specifically a missing county seal—threatened the validity of early land titles in King County.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the District Court on Monday evening, the trial of Jeff Gardner Kenyon vs. Robert M. Hall opened, involving the title to real estate property in this city. It is quite important, as it affects a number of titles heretofore imagined to be perfect. The case turned upon the manner in which deeds were acknowledged. The plaintiff sought to establish his title, offering in evidence a paper purporting to be a deed to himself from K. M. and wife, dated in 1884, and acknowledged before the late M. Hall, then auditor of King County, whose certificate of acknowledgment had affixed to it the seal of the Board of County Commissioners of the county, in lieu of the seal of the County Auditor. Mr. Hall, who was called as a witness in the case, testified that at the time of taking this acknowledgment, he had no seal other than the commissioner's seal, and that the same had been used for both the Auditor's and the seal of the Board of County Commissioners. Mr. Stafford, attorney for the defendants, moved to strike the deed on the grounds that the certificate was not authenticated by the official seal of the Auditor, which the law required him to have, that the seal of the county was unauthorized and gave no validity to the certificate, and that the deed was inadmissible as evidence.
“It is quite important, as it affects a number of titles heretofore imagined to be perfect.”
This 1885 case illustrates that Seattle's obsession with property ownership and bureaucratic red tape is foundational. Much like today's complex housing legislation, the simple failure to use the correct 'official seal' on a deed in the 1880s was enough to throw the entire status of property ownership into doubt.
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