In 1850, Samuel Hatton died, leaving a substantial estate. He gave six slaves--Old Peter, Charles and his wife Winney, and their three children, Alfred, Edwin, and Edy--to his sister Julia Laudman and made a bequest of five hundred dollars, but the bulk of his holdings, including 1,240 acres of land, household and kitchen furniture, tools, implements, horses, mules, steers, cattle, hogs, sheep, and more than fifty slaves, he bequeathed to his sister Elizabeth Langley, who lived in Pitt County, North Carolina. He gave instructions that the plantation should be kept together for thirty years. In 1853, the estate's executor died, and the new administrators, James Laudman and Alexander Ewing, "either sold or converted to their own use" a portion of the crop, livestock, farming tools "and other property [p. 387]." The administrators also journeyed to North Carolina and with "false and fraudulent representations persuasions and concealments" induced Elizabeth to put her mark on a document transferring all her interest in the estate to them (and several others who held securities) if they paid her husband $22,000 "in four equal annual installments." In 1855, the administrators sold the plantation and divided the slaves among themselves. Elizabeth Langley seeks relief, and asks to be allowed to "take the purchase money of the said lands or have the sale thereof set aside."
Result: Granted.
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Repository: Huntsville Madison County Public Library Archives
