John Champneys recounts that his wife, "dangerously ill," purchased a mulatto slave, in 1785, "the property of her brother Alexander Harvey"; the said slave had been nursing his said wife and "was taken away from her bedside and threatened to be extremely ill used" by the person who had designs on purchasing her. Champneys explains that the said slave "being in tears and earnestly intreating him to be the Purchaser ... obliged him to be the highest bidder." The petitioner had hoped that the slave's status as "House Servant" would spare her from being taken up by "the Confiscation Law." Champneys prays that "the hardship of the Case may be taken into consideration," that he may be permitted to keep said slave, and that he "may be permitted to pay off the Bond in Indents or her full value in money with Interest from the day of Sale."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
