Sanford v. Vinal

The plaintiff, an eighth-generation descendant of Edward Wanton, who died in 1716, appeals from a judgment dismissing an action brought to protect from development a family burial plot that contains Edward Wanton’s grave and other graves of the Wanton family. The burial plot is said to have fronted on the North River in Norwell, probably (but by no means certainly) on a riverfront tract now owned by Blackthorne Realty Trust. Efforts to find its location within the tract have so far met with failure. The trustee, the defendant Vinal, has subdivided the tract of sixteen acres into four lots…