Middlecoff

This action was brought by the plaintiff, appellant here, to foreclose a mortgage made by defendant C. S. Hemstreet, on April 16, 1896, to Lawrence Middlecoff, since deceased, upon certain lands situated in the county of Riverside, to secure a promissory note of that date for $250, for services to be thereafter rendered, and which mortgage was recorded in the recorder’s office of said Riverside County on April 21, 1896. The defendant Emily Hemstreet is the wife of said mortgagor; and three days after said mortgage was recorded she filed a declaration of homestead upon the same lands described in said mortgage, for the benefit of herself and husband. The court found in favor of the plaintiff, against the defendant C. S. Hemstreet, for the amount due upon the promissory note, but held that the mortgage was invalid as against the homestead, because of the insufficiency of the certificate of acknowledgment to entitle the mortgage to be recorded. No question is made as to the validity of the homestead, except as against the mortgage, nor as to the sufficiency of the findings to support the judgment. The only question discussed and to be decided is whether the certificate of the…