Patty, a forty-year-old free woman of color, represents that "she was emancipated in the year 1831" by the will of the late Catharine Coward. She admits "that she has ever done or performed any one act of extraordinary merit, but she can safely appeal to a numerous list of most worthy and respectable citizens of the county of Accomack ... to support the fact that she has ever sustained the character of a servant distinguished for peculiar and uncommon faithfulness -- always the confidant, the intimate, the nurse and friend of her master, mistress, and their children." Patty further states that "she is a half-blood, her father a white man, and never was the associate or companion of negro-slaves, except in the superintendance of them in place of her mistress whom she relieved." The petitioner therefore prays, "in consideration of this continued character for life of exemplary moral worth," that "your honourable bodies to pass an act to exempt her from the operation of the general laws of the commonwealth compelling free negroes to depart from its limits."
Result: Bill ordered.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
