In Canterbury, a state rep. tried to claim land as his own. Who really owns it is harder to prove.
Published: 11-15-2024 2:11 PM |
Jose Cambrils has had his eyes on Whitney Hill Road in Canterbury for years.
He bought a 30-acre plot of land where the trees were spared from logging and wildlife roams about and another 95 acres just down the street in hopes of building a house in 1999. But a 40-acre plot of land sits between his two properties, splitting the parcels.
He’s walked the land, planted trees and treated it like his own – so much so, that last fall he attempted to legally claim ownership of it, writing a quitclaim deed that transferred ownership to himself, despite never paying a dollar.
Cambrils, a state representative who lives in Loudon, said the move was not intended to be a “land grab” as other Canterbury residents have framed it to be, but rather an attempt to fulfill his longstanding goal of consolidating his property. In all the years he’s owned land in the town, no one has claimed the piece to be their own.
“I’ve been working on this for 24 years and I’m doing everything legally, through the courts. I’ve worked with the town. The town made their stance known,” said Cambrils who was re-elected as a state representative earlier this month. “I said, ‘Okay, we agree to disagree and we’ll see’.”
In fact, Cambrils’ attempt to take the property led Canterbury officials to start asking, who actually owns the 40 acres of untouched land in question.
That answer came from the century-old records. The last known owner was a farmer by the name of Samuel Lovering who died in 1899. Documents in the New Hampshire State Archives, which Canterbury Tax Collector Sam Papps pored over, show that Lovering left the land to his son Frank, starting a trail of property transfers that the town hoped to piece together in their defense against Cambrils.
The story of the Lovering farm is one of handwritten documents from the 19th and 20th centuries. Papps noted that when the property was transferred to Frank Lovering, the probate record from his estate was “scant” but a title to the Arlin Farm, as it was called at the time, was recorded.
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Documents delineate the Lovering family tree, and property transfers among the relatives, but the details of these deals were lost along the way.
When Frank Lovering died at 86 years old, the farm was left to his nephews, Maurice and Bertram Mudgett, who lived in California. The two then sold the land in the 1950s, or so they thought.
The sale only included a fraction of the total land Samuel Lovering originally owned, leaving 40 acres unaccounted for. Not only was the ownership of the parcel unclear as a result, but the town of Canterbury did not issue property tax bills on the piece for the last few decades.
For land with unpaid property taxes, towns can reclaim possession through a tax deed. Without sending tax bills, though, the town of Canterbury never pursued that option.
Over time the land was forgotten by the town but not Cambrils.
The town has recently put the property back on the tax roll, according to Town Administrator Ken Folsom. But doing so, and completing the due diligence of tracking the history of the property, only started with Cambrils’ activity.
Cambrils hired F.W. Stout, a surveyor, to draw the exact lot lines of the parcel. The map, which is filed at the Merrimack County Registry of Deeds notes that he owns the two plots north and south of the Lovering land. The records indicate that the “owner of record is believed to be the heirs of Samuel Lovering.”
A note explains that the tax maps show the Town of Canterbury owning the land, but that deed research shows the Loverings to have last owned the plot as the Thomas Arlin Farm.
From the town’s perspective, the map notes send a clear message – Cambrils did not own this center parcel that split his property.
In his quitclaim deed – a document that transfers ownership of property from one party to another – Cambrils asserts otherwise. Last fall, Cambrils filed the paperwork that attempted to put the piece into his possession.
To Mark Dunn, a real estate attorney who specializes in titles, the quitclaim deed Cambrils filed holds no weight.
Dunn has no involvement in the case, but he has a clear process when helping clients search for titles. He starts by looking through all documents recorded with the county registry of deeds and creates what he calls a title chain. The most recent property transfer is the starting point, looking at the owner, the grantor, the grantee, and the recipient. He’ll then follow the trail – searching the book and page number listed on the document to see if the owner matches up as the previous seller.
In piecing together this history, Dunn can craft a clear narrative of the property’s previous ownership.
Based on the deed that Cambrils filed, that can’t be done. He did not reference a book and page number of a previous sale that shows him claiming ownership of the property.
“This deed is never going to show up in the title chain when you wind up doing Samuel Lovering to his heirs and follow it all down,” he said. “If it’s outside the title chain, outside the chain that you know of, and that chain is in fact the property, it’s a rogue deed.”
Property records show that Cambrils is familiar with quitclaim deeds. On other properties he owns in Loudon and Penacook, he has filed several deeds correctly amending ownership.
Tracking the history of a property through title chains is one of a few protections for property owners against anyone else from filing deeds to take possession of their assets. Anyone can file a quitclaim deed, said Dunn, but proving the ownership in the details of the documents is harder.
When Cambrils recorded the deed with the county, the town of Canterbury received notice to update ownership on their tax maps. Instead of transferring the property to Cambrils, as his deed suggested, town employees began to do research on the history of the property and identified the heirs of Samuel Lovering as owners.
In doing this search, Canterbury has identified dozens of descendants of Lovering, mailing notices to each that say they might be entitled to property in the town.
Cambrils said he has had no issue with the town over the ownership debate. But he refutes the town’s focus on the Lovering descendants. To him, the heirs of the Mudgetts – the nephews who inherited the property from California – should be the focus. He said he is committed to doing his own genealogy search to prove his theory.
While Cambrils never paid for the land, he said he has spent $10,000 in legal advice and administrative work for the plot.
“I’ve done all the diligence. I’ve done all the work, and if anything, I’ve done the town a favor, because at the end of the day, now they have it properly identified as a 40-acre parcel,” he said. “I’ve done the job for them.”
If heirs to the property come forward, Cambrils said he will leave it be. If not, he has considered taking the property through adverse possession – a legal process that allows him to prove obvious use of the property for over 20 years.
“For me, if some heirs come forward and they do all the proper paperwork, I’m not fighting it,” he said. “I’m not fighting the town. I’m just presenting a case. I’m presenting a case to them that, look, I want to put the land back on the books. You say it’s unknown lands, I’ve treated it as my own.”
Michaela Towfighi can be reached at mtowfighi@cmonitor.com