## Facts

- Walter Allred and others were swimming in a new channel created by the Chariton River when Allred noticed an ancient Indian canoe partially visible but embedded in the riverbank soil.
- The riverbank where the canoe was embedded was part of a tract ultimately owned in fee simple by Ella Mae Knight Evans.
- The land’s title traced to a will that gave Nina Haney a life estate, with the remainder to Evans; Evans claimed the canoe as an incident of ownership of the fee.
- Allred discussed the discovery with others and planned to excavate the canoe and either sell it to a museum or display it.
- Allred showed the canoe’s location to William Biegel.
- The next day, Biegel and his sons excavated and removed the canoe without Allred’s participation or consent.
- No one could identify the canoe’s original maker or owner, how long it had been in the bank, or whether it had ever been intentionally abandoned.
- Allred and the other plaintiffs sued Biegel seeking possession of the canoe, asserting rights as finders of lost property and also claiming to have acquired interests through dealings with the life tenant and/or her sons.
- Evans intervened, asserting that because the canoe was embedded in the soil of her land, it belonged to her as the landowner.

## Issues

1. Whether an ancient canoe embedded in the soil of another’s land is “lost property” that the finder may claim against the landowner.
2. Whether a chattel embedded in the soil is treated as part of the realty so that title is in the owner of the fee simple estate.
3. Whether the life tenant (or persons claiming through the life tenant) could convey any enforceable interest in the embedded canoe against the remainderman/fee owner.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s judgment for Evans.
- The court held that the canoe, while embedded in the soil of Evans’s land, was treated as part of the realty and belonged to the fee simple owner.
- The court rejected the plaintiffs’ finder theory because the law of finders did not control where the object was embedded in another’s land.
- The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim of title through the life tenant (including arguments tied to a widow’s allowance or similar rights), concluding those assertions did not defeat Evans’s ownership.

## Legal Principles

- An object embedded in the soil is generally presumed to be part of the real estate and belongs to the owner of the land, absent proof of a superior right.
- Finder’s rules governing lost or mislaid personal property do not give a finder title to an item embedded in another’s land when the embedded-object doctrine applies.
- A life tenant cannot transfer greater rights than the life estate permits and cannot cut off the remainderman’s or fee owner’s title to interests treated as part of the land.
- Removal of an embedded object by a nonowner does not shift title away from the landowner; severance does not validate a finder’s claim as against the fee owner.

## Conclusion

Because the canoe was embedded in the soil of Evans’s land when discovered and removed, the court treated it as part of the realty and awarded ownership and the superior right to possession to Evans, rejecting both the plaintiffs’ finder-based claim and any asserted rights derived from the life tenant or her family.


Allred v. Biegel, 240 Mo. App. 818 (1949)