Ackey White, a sixty-year-old free man of color, represents that Martha Jordan Parks permitted him "to hire himself out and appropriate to his own uses the earnings of his own industry ... over and above the amount he agreed to pay her"; in this manner, "he was enabled in a few years to purchase himself" in 1824. White confesses, however, that "he was not aware that he violated any law of the land by remaining in his native place," where he "has acquired the confidence and respect of the mercantile community and of all others who have employed him" as a drayman. The petitioner "therefore most respectfully and earnestly entreats the General Assembly of Virginia to allow him to spend the brief remnant of his days in the land which gave him birth and amongst a people whose confidence he has already secured by his good conduct."
Result: Reasonable.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
