Isaac Davis owns three "manumitted" slaves and holds the indenture on a free black apprentice; they work on his farm in Cecil County, Maryland. Davis also owns a farm in Kent County, Delaware, and is "extensively engaged in agricultural pursuits" in both states; he has three black indentured servants--Charles Carpenter, Mitchel Davis, and John Davis--working his land in Kent County. Davis seeks exemption from the Delaware law designed to prevent the importation and exportation of slaves and asks permission for his slaves to plant and harvest his crops in both states. He attests that he is "no slaveholder except as he occasionally buys and manumits them by which their eventual freedom is secured, And that the sole object of this petition is to enable him to avail himself of the reasonable labour of said slaves (so called) and apprentices in his own employment."
Result: House: read, referred.
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Repository: Delaware State Archives, Dover, Delaware
