Jacob, Mary, Patsey, Meriwether, and Matilda, free blacks in Halifax County, Virginia, ask to settle in North Carolina. They explain that they were freed by the will of their late master, Phillip E. Vass [the younger]; said will directed that $2,000 be used to purchase at least 250 acres of land in North Carolina where the manumitted slaves would settle. The petitioners avow that "they are very poor and entirely destitute of the means to remove to any of the United States or to any other Country in which the laws would suffer them to reside and unless they can have the benefit of the provision made for them in the will aforesaid they are at all times liable by the laws of Virginia to be sold as slaves." They "therefore cast themselves on the indulgence of your Honourable body and humbly entreat that the benevolent intentions of their former master towards them may be suffered to be carried into execution by removing the restrictions which now prevent their availing themselves of all the benefits of the provision made for them by his will."
Result: Rejected.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
