Definition
NANCE does not appear to have a recognized legal definition in the standard common law vocabulary. The entry attributed to this term in Rapalje & Lawrence is a misfiled or misattributed entry for BARRIER — a mining law concept referring to a wall of coal left standing between two adjacent mine workings to prevent flooding, subsidence, or dangerous encroachment between neighboring operations.
For the substantive legal content that appears under this heading in Rapalje & Lawrence, see BARRIER.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A large shrub or small tree of subtropical and tropical Americas (Byrsonima crassifolia), bearing a small, sweet, yellow fruit.
The Wiktionary definition identifies a botanical term with no apparent legal application. The Rapalje & Lawrence source material filed under this heading is unrelated to the botanical meaning and is almost certainly the product of a printing, indexing, or transcription error in the original volume.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering NANCE as a headword in Rapalje & Lawrence should treat it as a source artifact rather than a genuine legal term. The dictionary text beneath it defines BARRIER in the context of mining law — specifically the rule that a mine owner may work coal up to the boundary of their land even where this injures a neighbor, subject to agreement, easement, or custom. That doctrine is significant in the history of mining and property law, but it belongs under BARRIER, not here.
This kind of indexing or typesetting displacement is not uncommon in nineteenth-century legal reference works. When a historical dictionary entry does not match its headword, the reliable research move is to locate the correct headword — here, BARRIER — and treat the misplaced content as illustrative of the limits of pre-digital indexing rather than as evidence of a legal term called NANCE.
No statute, reported case, or treatise uses NANCE as a term of legal art. Any future corpus matches for this string in legal documents are more likely to be a surname (a party name, judge name, or author) than a legal concept.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry as captured in the source material reads: "BARRIER.- In the law of mines, a wall of coal left between two mines. In the absence of an agreement, easement or custom to the contrary, every mine owner may work up to the boundary of his land, although his doing so may cause injury to his neighbor, e.g. by letting [in water]." The entry is plainly the BARRIER entry, not a definition of any term called NANCE. No other historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus — including Bouvier, Black, or Burrill — carries a substantive entry for NANCE as a legal concept. The absence is consistent across sources and confirms that no recognized doctrine or term of art answers to this name.
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