Isaac v. Emory

Miller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The motion to dismiss this appeal must prevail. The decree appealed from provides for the sale of the lot of ground in controversy with the improvements upon it, consisting of a church building, in order to pay certain claims of the complainant and others, which the Court below held to be an equitable lien thereon. The appellants, seven in number, calling themselves the “Trustees of the Towsontown Station of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” were not made parties to the bill, but came in by petition, after the testimony had been taken but before the case was heard, praying to be made parties defendants, with leave to answer the bill, and this prayer was granted by the Court upon certain conditions expressed in its order making them defendants.

In their petition and answer the appellants claim that as trustees as aforesaid ³³⁶ they are the holders of the legal title and the real owners of the property in dispute, and the appeal is taken by them as such trustees. ' It appears from the record that Mary Ann Shealey, the then owner of the lot in question, for the consideration of $1000, conveyed the same, by deed dated the 24th of February, 1870, to five named individuals, “ to have and to hold the same unto the said grantees, in trust that the said premises shall be used, kept, maintained and disposed of as a place of divine worship, for the use of the. ministry and membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America, subject to the discipline, usage, and ministerial appointments of said church, as from time to time authorized and declared by the General Conference of said church, and the Annual Conference, in whose bounds said premises are situate.” On the 14th of October, 1870, an attempt was made to incorporate a religious society under the general law upon that subject, by the corporate name of “ The Trustees of Towsontown Station of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” and on the same day the grantees in the deed of the 24th of February, 1870, conveyed the property in fee to this corporation by its corporate name. But the validity of this attempted incorporation came before this Court in the case of Boyce vs. Trustees, &c., of the M. E. Church, 46 Md., 359 , and it was there held to be inoperative, because essential requirements of the corporation law had not been complied with. The result was, that no title passed to this pretended corporation by the deed of the 14th of October, 1870, and this the appellants concede. They indeed admit and aver in their answer that there was no “ good or effective grant” of the property to this corporation, but they insist that the property “ had in fact vested in the Methodist Episcopal Church of Towsontoion Station under ” the original deed of the 24th of February, 1870, and that they now represent that church “ as the duly elected trus ³³⁷ tees to succeed those