Opinion of the Court. sustain such charge is required to be, however, of the clearest, strongest, and of the most convincing character, and by disinterested witnesses. It shocks the moral sense of community to say, the unsupported testimony of an interested witness, who sees a fortune in his success, shall destroy the deliberate act of an officer appointed by law to do the act he certifies, under the solemn sanctions of an oath, he has done. Such is not the law, such is not justice, and such a rule would throw land titles into chaos. There is another consideration connected with this point we have heretofore failed to notice. A party buying land inspects the public records, especially the record of deeds. He sees upon it a deed, executed with all legal formalities, including the relinquishment of dower by the wife. Everything is substantially as the law requires. He makes the purchase from the grantee in that deed, paying a large sum of money; takes possession; makes valuable improvements, in the confident security the recorded facts impose. Not a whisper is heard of an adverse claim-not a syllable that the wife has not relinquished her dower knowingly, voluntarily and freely, as the record told him. until years after the death of the first grantor occurs. The widow then, for the first time, says she never relinquished her dower; the certificate is a fraud and a forgery; she never signed the deed; the signature is not in her handwriting, and proposes to prove it by her own oath. Is an innocent purchaser for value, without notice of anything of this kind, to suffer? Can she avoid the deed as against him? Reason, justice, common honesty, say not. On general principles, a purchaser for value, without notice of any adverse claim or secret equities, can not be disturbed, and we see no reason why the same rule should not prevail in kindred cases. Some of these considerations are found and forcibly urged in the case in 11 Leigh (Va.), 294, Harkins v. Forsythe. The statute of Virginia entrusted to two magistrates the examination of a feme covert touching the execution of a deed, to take her acknowledgment, and to certify Opinion of the Court. their act to the clerk of the court, in order to its being recorded, as in this State. It vested them with the power of doing, in pais, for the convenience of the parties, what it was the province of a court to do in proceedings by fine and recovery. It authorized them to take that privy examination which, in the levy of a fine, constituted a part of a judicial proceeding, and never could be contradicted. It empowered them to take and certify the examination and acknowledgment, which it also makes one of the functions of its courts of justice, and thus appears to invest them with an authority judicial in its But, above all, it constitutes their certificate the authentic and sole medium of proving that the feme covert has acknowledged the deed with all the solemnities required by the statute. No other testimony can be admitted of the fact. (Ennor v. Thompson, 46 Ill. 221.) Indeed, from the secret character of the proceeding, none other can exist as to the fact. And the court say, when, to these considerations, we add, that the very object of the privy examination and certificate is, to complete, consummate and make final the contract between the parties, it must be conceded there can be no act in pais of the officers of the law entitled to greater sanctity than this. The court close by saying, this solemn consummation of a contract, under the sanction of the magistracy, must not be rendered nugatory and void, after the lapse of years, by the slippery testimony of witnesses. This reasoning applies with as much force under our statute. We held, in the Lickmon case, supra, that the act of the officer was judicial in its nature, and it must have the effect of all such judicial acts. A case strongly bearing in the same direction, is Montgomery v. Hobson, Meigs, (Tenn.) 437. To the same effect is Williams v. Hobson, 6 Ohio State R. 510. In Pumphrey v. Pumphrey, 4 West. Law Monthly, 40, it was held, if a married woman be persuaded, by fraudulent statements as to the nature of the consideration her husband is to receive, to join in a conveyance of his land; she will not Opinion of the Court. be barred of her dower, except as against a bona fide purchaser without notice of the fraud. We are satisfied, from the evidence, appellee was present in Chicago the greater part of the year in which this deed wast executed; that her acknowledgment of its execution and relinquishment of dower is in substantial compliance with the statute, and concludes her forever from asserting any claim to dower. On the point, that the signature is not her handwriting, her testimony in this respect has some support from that of Mr. Farwell, who, familiar with her handwriting, testifies he is quite certain it is not her handwriting. The deed is destroyed, and cannot be subjected to the scrutiny of others equally or more familiar with her handwriting, but we regard the fact as wholly immaterial. It is enough, she has acknowledged in the mode prescribed by the statute, and before a proper officer, that she did execute the deed, which includes signing and sealing, freely and voluntarily, and relinquished her dower to the land described in it, and all this without the fear or compulsion of her husband. It is of no importance who put her name to the deed, so long as it is of record that she acknowledged the signature. Is my deed less binding upon me, because I did not put my name to it, but another person did, by my direction or not by my direction, and I present myself before the proper officer, with the deed, and acknowledge its execution, and he so certifies, and it goes to the record with this official impress upon it? Shall I be permitted to say, long years after, when the magistrate is dead. I never signed the deed? No. There stands the record, and there it will stand forever. We see no merits in this case. More than thirty-four years have passed since the deed was executed and acknowledged, when appellee was a gay, fashionable lady, not more than twenty-three years of age, caring and knowing nothing about her husband's business, as she herself states. The mutual confidence and affection subsisting between them 43-69TH ILL. Opinion of the Court. forbids the idea she would refuse to sign a deed her husband requested her to sign, or that he would resort to forgery of her name to consummate a sale, or that her brother, the grantee in the deed, should connive at it. The idea is preposterous. Believing the case so clear for appellants on this, the main branch of the case, we have not deemed it necessary to consider, very attentively, the other phase in which it is presented, but, from all that appears, on the settlement with her brother, appellee received other lands and property in lieu of this, which, the evidence inclines us to believe, was part of the land purchased by her husband with the money given her by her father. But it is unnecessary now to consider the facts in relation to those transactions. Appellee has once voluntarily and freely relinquished her dower in this land, and can not now resume it. The decree of the Superior Court is reversed and the bill dismissed. Decree reversed. INDEX. ABATEMENT. MISNOMER IN PROCESS. 1. Must be pleaded in abatement. Where the real party in inter- 2. In a suit to foreclose a mortgage against the infant heirs of the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OF DEEDS. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MARRIED WOMAN. 1. A substitute for fine and recovery at common law. The statute IMPEACHMENT OF CERTIFICATE. 2. Upon what ground. As a fine and recovery at common law was |