Joannah Boylstone and her son, George Boylstone, administrators of the estate of William Boylstone, seek compensation for a "Negro Wench" named Rachel worth about seventy-five pounds. Rachel, the petitioners contend, was "forcibly taken & carried off by an armed party of Troops under the command of Genl. Sumter"; William Boylstone "supposed her to have run away or been stolen." In 1790, learning she was held by Major John Davidson in North Carolina, Boylstone brought suit. At the trial in September 1791, the evidence revealed that Rachel had been taken up by troops under the command of Colonel Henry Hampton of Sumter's Brigade and then turned over to Thomas Williams, a soldier in the brigade, as payment for his services (eighty-six pounds sterling) during the war. It was ruled that according to the laws of North and South Carolina owners of slaves taken up as payment to Revolutionary soldiers should apply to their respective legislatures for relief, whereby Boylstone lost his case after considerable expense. The petitioner further lament that, by the time this occurred, the South Carolina Auditor's Office no longer accepted claims for such property. The petitioners, as the widow and orphan of said deceased, confide that they are both "in very indigent circumstances" and that "they are without Remedy except from the Justice of the General Assembly” as they have not recovered "any satisfaction for his said Negro taken and appropriated as aforesaid in payment of one of the just Debts of this State."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
