Decrease in Area 



Of tl)e Forest Preserve, Tt)roagt) Cancellation of Titles. 



THE loss of lands in the Preserve through defective titles was small as compared 

 with the decrease in area in former years, when a cancellation of the State's 

 title was granted so often for trivial or technical reasons During the past two 

 years the Comptroller has refused to entertain any application for the cancellation of a 

 tax sale unless the application was made by the purchaser at the sale. This is in 

 accordance with the decision of the courts, that the owner of the land, who defaulted 

 his taxes, already had had his day in court ; and that the application for cancellation 

 could be made only by the purchaser at the sale. 



Lands are sometimes sold at a tax sale through mistake. The tax may 

 have been paid, but owing to some clerical error was not credited to the tax 

 payer ; or the land may have been exempt from taxation, or it may have 

 been doubly assessed, both as resident and non-resident, or it may have been 

 assessed in the wrong tax district. There are instances where persons, having paid all 

 their taxes regularly for years, were surprised to find their lands scheduled on the 

 printed land list of this Department as part of the Forest Preserve Now, when a 

 citizen learns that through some error, clerical or otherwise, the State has acquired a 

 tax deed to his land, he finds it exceedingly difficult to remove this cloud on his title. 

 He cannot apply, as formerly, to the Comptroller to have the mistake corrected by a 

 cancellation of the sale, because he was not the purchaser at the sale. The purchaser 

 is the only one, under the ruling of the courts, who can apply; and the purchaser 

 seldom, if ever, has any need to make such an application. His interest always lies in 

 the opposite direction ; he wants the sale to stand. 



In view of this condition of affairs, some persons, whose property appeared on 

 the list of lands in the Forest Preserve as having been acquired by the State at tax 

 sales, appealed to the Legislature for relief and obtained the enactment of the 

 following laws: 



Chapter 219, Laws of 1896. 



AN ACT to authorize the Comptroller to hear and determine the application of William 



McEchron and James N. Ordway as surviving executors and trustees of and under the 



last will and testament of James Ordway, deceased, for cancellation of Lots Number 



102 and 103, Fourteenth Township, Pond's Survey, Totten & Crosslield's Purchase, 



Essex County, for unpaid taxes. 

 466 



