Robert Kerr Jr. seeks reimbursement from Alexander Meek, from whom he purchased a 10-year-old "mullatto or dark coloured boy" named William Sutton in 1785. Since Meek purported to have "the right to sell" Sutton, the petitioner admits that he agreed to pay Meek forty pounds Virginia currency "for the Service of the Said boy until he Should come and arrive to the age of twenty one years." Kerr reveals, however, that the Green County Court in Virginia ruled that Sutton "was a freeborn orphan Child and not a slave subject or liable to be sold, by the said Alexander Meek." He further declares that said court ordered Sutton to "be bound by that Court" and "indulged the Said Sutton to choose his master who made choice of your Orator." Conceiving that "he held the Said Sutton as an orphan child bound to him and not in right of any purchase from the said Alexander Meek," the petitioner asserts that Meek recovered a "fraudulent" judgment against him for the forty-pound purchase price. Kerr therefore prays that Meek be compelled to "repay" the cash tendered for Sutton and that an injunction be issued "to injoin all further proceedings at law." The petitioner also complains that 17-year-old "William Sutton claimed a right to inlist into the publick service and did actually inlist and march ... against the Northern Indians ... whereby your Orator hath been deprived of the most valueable part of the service of his said apprentice."
Result: Granted.
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Repository: Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee
