Forty-one-year-old Samuel represents that "his late master William Hawkins by his last will and testament ... willed and bequeathed that your petitioner, at his (testators) decease, should be emancipated and set free"; Hawkins also "devised to your petitioner fifteen acres of land ... in order to enable petitioner to live in quiet and peace near his family." Samuel states, however, that he "is distressed to find that he cannot be liberated without not only leaving his land, his family, but the state." Having always "supported a good character for probity and morality," the petitioner prays "your Hon. body to pass a law for his benefit, exempting him from the operation of the act of 1831."
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Repository: Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee
