Frederick A. Ford, Escheator for Charleston District, asks for an accounting of the estate of the late George Broad. Broad, "a foreigner by birth," died in 1836 and left a will by which he named John R. Dangerfield trustee to his fourteen slaves. Dangerfield was to "permit and suffer the slaves above mentioned ... to apply and appropriate their time and labour to their own proper use and behoof." Ford asserts "that the trusts declared by the said will fail, because they are contrary to the policy of the law and expressly invalidated by the Act of 1841," which prohibits the creation of virtually free slaves. In addition, Ford informs the court that Dangerfield sold three of the slaves, despite holding them in trust, and then converted the proceeds of the sale "to his own use." Dangerfield has recently died and now his administrator, Starling Dangerfield, has taken possession of cattle that should belong to Broad's estate; he would have also taken the slaves, but "they have been seized as slaves illegally emancipated." Insisting that Broad's estate "has Escheated to the state," Ford prays that Starling Dangerfield account for the property that he holds from Broad's estate and "that so much thereof as has not been converted may be sold and the money paid into the treasury."
Result: Granted.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
