On January 28, 1882, Dan R. Knight and John A. Lovett sold to William J. Knight several tracts of land situated in the state of Louisiana. The price stated in the act of sale was $15,000, $500 cash and the balance, $14,500, on credit, evidenced by a note of the purchaser. On February 5, 1887, W. J. Knight sold to Viola P. Knight, wife of Dan R. Knight, a one-half interest, and on February 7, 1887, he sold to J. C. Knight a one-fourth interest in the same lands. The remaining one-fourth interest was parted with by an act of sale dated April 13, 1889, wherein W. J. Knight joined with Viola P. Knight and John C. Knight in selling the entire land to Henry J. Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore. On April 3, 1901, Moore sold his undivided one-half interest to the Lutcher & Moore Lumber Company. All these acts of sale were duly recorded in the proper land conveyance records.
In March, 1903, William. H. Knight, his brother and two sisters, one a married woman, whose husband joined in the suit as a merely technical party, commenced this action in the state district court of Vernon parish, Louisiana, against Henry J. Lutcher and the Lutcher & Moore Lumber Company, asking to be adjudged the owners of and to be entitled to the possession of an undivided half interest in the lands bought by William J. Knight in 1882 from D. R. Knight and John A. Lovett. The right of ownership was based upon the averment that the petitioners were children of William J. Knight; that the property bought by him was acquired during the marriage between their father and mother; that it formed a part of the community existing between them, and constituted an acquet of the community at the time of the death of the mother in August, 1885. The right of the father to sell, in 1887 and 1889, the onehalf interest belonging to their mother, as the result of her community estate, was denied, and it was charged that the defendants, who were in possession in virtue of the attempted sale made by the father, were mere trespassers. It was besides averred that William J. Knight, the father, married a second time, in June, 1886.