James Patterson, a free man of color born in Columbia, seeks to free his wife Sally, his son George, and his daughter Candice. Patterson, "a carpenter by trade," could "not raise a Sufficient Sum to affect that desirable and anxious object" of purchasing his family "until after the passage of the act prohibiting the freeing of slaves." The petitioner reports that he "made the purchase of his wife and Son in 1821 and paid for them One Thousand Dollars a Sum far beyond their value, his Son being at that time about Seven years old, and his wife not worth more than an ordinary female house Servant"; his daughter Candice was born after he had purchased his wife. "Anxious that they should be placed on a footing with himself," Patterson prays that "your Honorable Body ... will take the peculiar circumstances of his case into consideration and make his wife and children free."
Result: Rejected.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
