About 1836, Robert J. Glenn proposed to his mother that "his & her negroes should work his and her land together, he taking control of the whole." During the next two decades, the slaves on the plantation produced many valuable crops, including cotton, corn, and grains. When Glenn died, his mother made a claim against the state of a "large magnitude." Harriet Glenn, administratrix of the estate of Robert J. Glenn, explains that her husband never kept records or accounts of buying and selling slaves, disposing of crops, or expenses. She wished to avoid costly litigation, "especially with members of the family with whom her husband & herself had always lived on terms of strictest intimacy affection and confidence." In the end the mother and the widow signed a compromise, agreeing to divide the estate, which included forty-four slaves. Harriet asks the court to "make the necessary orders" for her three children "the only heirs at law or distributees of the estate."
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Repository: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
