Petition #20185912

Abstract

Through her next friend, Mary Ann O. Slaydon asks the court to empanel a jury to decide whether her husband, Benjamin H. Slaydon, is a "lunatic." At the time of their marriage, Benjamin was seventeen and the owner of four slaves. Mary Ann informs the court that, although given to occasional "sprees of intoxication," which got him "into difficulties sometimes of a serious character," her husband managed to hold on to his property until he reached his majority. Shortly after reaching his majority, however, things got worth and he has now "fooled" away his four slaves and other property. He traded two slaves, young boys worth more than two thousand dollars, for a horse worth about one-hundred-and- fifty dollars; and he sold the slave woman Matilda, who would have brought a large price at auction, for a fraction of her worth. Slaydon is "very intemperate," Mary Ann asserts, "and those who planned to swindle him would follow him around and offer him drinks until they got him drunk" and then they would "Swindle him out of his property." But even when sober he is unable to manage money. She asks the court to declare him a "lunatic" and appoint a guardian to administer his largely diminished estate.

Result: Granted.

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Citation information

Repository: Lauderdale County Courthouse, Florence, Alabama

Subjects