George Sherman, a free person of color, represents that "he emigrated to the State of Tennessee sometime in the year 1839." He therefore prays “your Honorable bodies to exempt him from the penalties of the law "made for the prevention of the emigration of free negroes to the State, and from all other penalties" and that the legislature "will most graciously, by a special law for that purpose, allow and grant to him all the rights and privileges appertaining and belonging to native free born persons of color of the State of Tennessee." A notary public from New York certified in 1831 that Sherman was "aged about nineteen years, of the height of five feet four inches, of a mulatto complexion, wooly hair, no scars -- that he is an indian, one of the Narragansett tribe, by profession a mariner, born in New Port, Rhode Island."
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Repository: Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee
