In compliance with the law, slave owners William Williamson, William Maxey, and John D. Turner each sent a slave to work on the public road in 1848. The petitioners declare that while twenty-five-year-old Thomas, twenty-one-year-old Charles and twenty-one-year-old Goodwin "were engaged in the public service working on the road aforesaid in accordance with their duty and in obedience to law … said negroes ... were accidentally ... drowned in the Trinity River along the bank or bluff of which a part of the said road runs." Noting that "each likely negro" was "worth from eight to nine hundred dollars," the owners seek "such reasonable compensation for our losses as your Honorable Body may think just and proper."
Result: Referred to committee on state affairs.
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Repository: Texas State Library-Archives Division, Austin, Texas
