Definition
"Convey a farm to A" is a phrase of conveyancing construction, encountered in older deeds, wills, and instruments of settlement, used to examine how courts interpreted the scope and object of a grantor's or testator's direction to transfer a specifically described parcel — a farm — to a named or identifiable beneficiary. The phrase itself is not a term of art with independent doctrinal weight; rather, it is a phrase-in-context whose legal significance lies in how courts resolved questions of construction: What property passes? What estate passes? Does the direction convey fee simple, life estate, or something lesser when the instrument is silent on the quantum of interest?
At its core, the phrase raises two distinct construction problems that courts historically treated together:
1. OBJECT OF CONVEYANCE: Whether "a farm" in a given instrument refers to a legally sufficient description capable of passing title, or whether ambiguity in the description defeats the grant.
2. NATURE OF INTEREST CONVEYED: Whether a bare direction to "convey a farm to A," without words of limitation, passes the fee or only a lesser estate — a question answered differently under common law rules (requiring words of inheritance such as "and his heirs") and under modern statutory presumptions favoring fee simple.
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Common Confusion
This phrase is easily conflated with related conveyancing phrases. "Convey an estate" addresses the breadth of power granted to a trustee or agent — whether authorization to convey includes the power to pass the entire interest or only a partial one. "Convey and devise" is a composite phrase that courts have interpreted as referring exclusively to real property, not personal property. "Convey and settle lands" arises in covenant contexts and carries additional obligations of assurance. Each phrase has its own construction history. Researchers should not assume that judicial interpretation of one phrase governs the others; courts treated these as distinct problems even when they arose in similar instruments.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase matters principally as a construction artifact in historical New York and English equity practice. Its research value is as a doctrinal data point in the broader question of how courts read conveyancing directions that identified property by use or common name ("a farm") rather than by metes and bounds or formal legal description.
Researchers working in pre-codification New York materials should be alert to several traps:
ESTATE QUANTUM WITHOUT WORDS OF LIMITATION: Under classical common law, a deed conveying "a farm to A" without "and his heirs" passed only a life estate. New York moved early to abrogate this by statute, eventually establishing the presumption that a grant conveys fee simple unless a lesser estate is expressly stated. Instruments from the transitional period will be misread if the researcher applies the modern presumption to pre-statutory documents, or vice versa.
DESCRIPTION BY USE VS. DESCRIPTION BY BOUNDARY: "A farm" identifies property by its agricultural use and common identity rather than by formal legal description. Historical courts had to determine whether this was sufficient to pass title or whether it created a latent ambiguity requiring extrinsic evidence. The resolution varied by instrument type (deed vs. will vs. covenant) and by the availability of parol evidence.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS: This phrase connects closely to the broader constellation of construction cases collected under phrases like "convey an estate" (power questions) and "convey and settle lands" (covenant obligations). Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment of these phrases as parallel entries signals that 19th-century practitioners understood them as part of a unified problem set in conveyancing construction, not isolated puzzles.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence index this phrase as a construction entry without providing an independent doctrinal exposition — their method is to signal the leading case reference as the operative authority, leaving the substantive rule to be drawn from the case itself. The companion entries in the same source are instructive by contrast: "Convey an estate (power to)" addresses the agency and power dimension; "Convey and devise (relates to real, not personal property)" addresses the subject-matter dimension; "Convey and settle lands (in a covenant)" addresses the obligation dimension. Together, these entries reflect the systematic way 19th-century legal lexicographers mapped a cluster of related construction problems. What Rapalje & Lawrence does not do — and what modern researchers must supply — is any account of how statutory reform in New York after the Revised Statutes of 1829 altered the default rules that many of these cases assume. The historical dictionary entries are therefore most reliable as guides to pre-reform practice and should be treated with caution as statements of rules that survived codification unchanged.
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Jurisdictional Note
The leading authorities collected under this phrase in Rapalje & Lawrence are drawn from New York state courts (Wendell and Barbour reporters) and English equity (Atkyns). The construction principles applied were broadly shared across common law jurisdictions, but the specific statutory reforms affecting words of limitation and estate quantum varied considerably by state. Researchers working outside New York should verify whether analogous statutory presumptions were in force in the relevant jurisdiction at the relevant date.
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