Eighteen-year-old Alexander Roach reports that his sixteen-year-old female slave "was apprehended upon a charge of murder" and that she was committed to the Rockingham jail; she was later "tried and convicted of said murder, but it being suggested that she might be pregnant her executed was respited until the last day of June at which time she was executed for sd. murder." Roach discloses that he is an orphan and "that the only property which he possess'd was said negro girl and a negro boy about eleven years old." He further states that the jail fees and "costs attending the trial and execution" equal more than $100. He considers "the case an extremely hard one upon him" in that he was deprived of his "likely" negro girl and now faces being "cast into [the] world poor and indebted." He therefore, "thro the medium of this petition," thought it proper "to petition your Honourable body for such relief as you may think proper."
Result: Rejected by committee; recommend bill.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
