When Catharine Phillips married her husband, Samuel G. Phillips, in 1845, he had neither money nor property. In 1847, her brother, James M. Anthony, gave to her and the heirs of her body a twelve-year-old slave named Charlotte. One year later, her father-in-law, Wilder Phillips of the state of Georgia, made a similar gift of a sixteen-year-old girl named Louisa. The two deeds of gift stipulated that the slaves were "for her sole & separate use & free from the Control or any of the liabilities or debts of her husband." Charlotte and Louisa worked in the boarding house operated by Catharine, who also sold poultry and ran a dairy. With her profits, she bought a forty-five-year-old male slave named Handy for three hundred dollars, held in trust by her husband "free and exempt from all his debts, liabilities, & demands." When her husband's mercantile business failed and he became "much embarrassed" and "largely insolvent," his creditors went after Catharine's slaves. She petitions to keep the creditors and the sheriff "perpetually enjoined & forever restrained from proceeding to sell under execution at law either of the Slaves Charlotte, Louisa, or Handy."
Result: Granted; appealed; affirmed.
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Repository: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
