Eighty-six-year-old Peggy Rankin seeks permission to emancipate her mulatto slave, Siney, and Siney's three children. Having owned Siney's mother, Rankin recounts that Siney "has been taught such labor as are generally performed by free white females" and that she "has ever been a faithful and obedient Servant and has been remarkably kind and attentive to your Memorialist in her infirm old age." The petitioner, "anxious to reward her kindness and obedience," states that her late husband, Robert Rankin, "intended that the said Mulatto woman should remain in Servitude only during the lifetime of your memorialist." With Rankin's heirs in agreement and the estate without debt, the widow Rankin prays "your honorable body to emancipate the said Mulatto woman Siney."
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Repository: Texas State Library-Archives Division, Austin, Texas
