{"petition":[{"petition_analysis_number":"11684607","petition_url":"https:\/\/dlas.uncg.edu\/petitions\/petition\/11684607","state":"Virginia","county":"Spotsylvania","location_type":"County","file_day":4,"file_month":2,"file_year":1846,"filing_court":"Legislative","result":"referred to Committee for Courts of Justice","enslaved_count":4,"fpoc_count":0,"total_people_count":9,"repository":"Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia","abstract":"Ely Ball and Henry Satterwhite, trustees of Nancy Horner, represent \"that a slave named Dennis a portion of the trust property ... absconded and passed himself as a free man.\"  They further report that \"while passing in that character he committed a felony punishable on a slave by stripes, on a free man by confinement in the Penitentiary.\"  The petitioners aver that they did not \"he was arrested & tried & convicted as a freeman and sentenced to the penitentiary where he now is.\"  Noting that he is \"now lost to owner,\" the petitioners ask to be \"relieved by the passage of a Law to restore him to his owners and they respectfully pray the passage of such a Law.\"  Dennis, \"by the name of William Mayo,\" was convicted \"of having carried or caused to be carried from the town of Fredericksburg beyond the commonwealth, three slaves.\"","subjects":[{"subject":"Freedom papers"},{"subject":"Jails\/Workhouses"},{"subject":"Trials (enslaved)"},{"subject":"Rape"},{"subject":"Freedom seekers"},{"subject":"Enticing (enslaved)"},{"subject":"Whipping"}]}]}