Extracted From:
  A LAW DICTIONARY ..., SIXTH EDITION, 1856
  by John Bouvier
  CHILDS & PETERSON, PHILADELPHIA

SEISIN, estates. The possession of an estate of freehold.... Seisin was used in
contradistinction to that precarious kind of possession by which tenants in
villenage held their lands, which was considered to be the possession of their
lords in, whom the freehold continued. 
   Seisin is either in fact or in law. 
   Where a freehold estate is conveyed to a person by feoffment, with livery of
seisin, or by any of those conveyances which derive their effect from the
statute of uses, he acquires a seisin in deed or in fact, and a freehold in
deed: but where the freehold comes to a person by act of law, as by descent, he
only acquires a seisin in law, that is, a right of possession, and his estate is
called a freehold In law. 
   The seisin in law, which the heir acquires on the death of his ancestor, May
be defeated by the entry of a stranger, claiming a right to the land, which is
called an abatement. (q.v.) 
   The actual seisin of an estate may be lost by the forcible entry of a
stranger who thereby ousts or dispossesses the owner this act is called a
disseisin. (q.v.) 
   According to Lord Mansfield, the various alterations which have been made in
the law for the last three centuries, "have left us but the name of feoffment,
seisin, tenure, and, freeholder, without any precise knowledge of the thing
originally signified by these sounds." 
   In the United States, a conveyance by deed executed and acknowledged, and
properly recorded according to law, and the descent cast upon the heir are, in
general, considered as a seisin in deed without entry; and a grant by
letters-patent from the commonwealth has the same effect.... The recording of a
deed is equivalent to livery of seisin...
   In Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Ohio, seisin means merely,
ownership, and the distinction between seisin in deed and in law is not known in
practice.... A patent by the commonwealth, in Kentucky, gives a, right entry,
but not actual seisin.

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