Thomas v. Warner

Bryan, J,, delivered the opinion of the Court. It was decided after proper proceedings, in the Circuit Court for Montgomery Connty, that Brainard H. Warner should be registered as a voter. If he had been a resident of the State of Maryland for a year, and of Montgomery County for six months next preceding the ensuing election, he was entitled to be registered, but not otherwise. We will examine the evidence offered to prove residence.

It was shown that from the year eighteen hundred and eighty-five to eighteen hundred and ninety-two, he resided continuously at No. 2100 Massachusetts avenue, Washington, D. C. ; that in the spring of eighteen hundred and ninety-two he purchased land in Montgomery County, and built a dwelling-house thereon ; that about July of that year .he, with his family, moved to this house from his house in Washington and remained there until November, when he returned with his family to Washington; that he left two minor sons in his house m Montgomery, with a family to care for them, and that they remained there until the next .spring; that he and his family, with the exception of his two sons, occupied his Washington house continuously until May or June, eighteen hundred and ninety-three, when he removed to the Montgomery house, which he continued to occupy until October or November of that year; he then ¹⁹ returned with his family to his Washington house, where he continued to live until about May, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, when he closed his house in Washington and returned with his family to the Montgomery house, and continued to live there with his family until about the sixteenth day of November of the same year ; he then closed his house in Montgomery and' returned to his Washington house, where he continued to live with his family until about the twenty-ninth day of May, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, when he closed his house in Washington and returned to his house in Montgomery, where he and his family continued to lived until the day this testimony was taken, which was on the first day of November of the same year ; that in February, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, he rented his Montgomery house to a friend of his, a Mr. Upshur, who continued to occupy it, as a tenant, until the twenty-fifth of May of the same year; that on the second day of May he spent the night in the house as a guest of Mr. Upshur, to comply with the provisions of the registration law; and that he paid taxes in the District of Columbia on his bonds and personal securities. Warner, on the sixteenth of November, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, made before the Clerk of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, the affidavit required by the Act of 1890. Warner was undoubtedly a resident of Washington from eighteen hundred and eighty-five to eighteen hundred and ninety-two. It was in his power to remove his residence to Maryland if he thought proper to do so.

It was a very easy thing to do. If he had broken up his establishment in Washington, abandoned his residence there and made his home in Montgomery, there could have been no question about the matter. But sometimes the change of residence cannot be proved by clear and unambiguous evidence. It must, however, always appear that the former residence has been abandoned.

There must be an actual acquisition of a new abode ; and in the case of a married man the settlement of the family there with all the incidents and associations ²⁰ belonging to a home according to their circumstances. The idea of residence is compounded of fact and