Susan Smith, a free woman of color, asks that her five-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Smith, be released from her indenture to Thomas H. Knighton. Smith states that her daughter was indentured against her will and that Smith "was at that time and ever since has been abundantly able to support and clothe and maintain" her daughter. She adds that had she been informed of the magistrate's intention to bind out her daughter, she would have "preferred she should have been bound to another man." In his Answer, Knighton charges that Smith left her daughter "in the most forlorn condition ... in a house alone with no other means of subsistence than those of self exertion or beggary." He claims he was moved by compassion and "simple humanity" to intervene and have her indentured to him.
Result: Granted.
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Repository: Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland
