In 1848, Dr. Pleasant Kittrell sold to Stith Evans a thirty-five-year-old blacksmith named Carney for $1,250. The condition of sale was that once Carney had earned enough to pay back his purchase price, plus ten percent interest, he would "have and enjoy his freedom." Over the next several years Carney paid his owner more than two thousand dollars. In 1854, Evans mortgaged the slave to Samuel Cowen, who knew about the original sale contract, for $2,500. Now a resident of Texas, Kittrell asks the court to force Evans "to execute and perform all the duties and obligations and undertakings in his said Contract, and the freedom of the said Carney in order that he may remove the said Carney free from all claim and right of property forever beyond the limits of the State of Alabama."
Result: Granted; appealed; reversed; dismissed.
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Repository: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
