In 1847, urged by a friend named Oliver W. Austin, Susan J. Proctor invested her savings in slave property. She purchased a woman named Virginia for six hundred dollars. She permitted Austin to act as her agent and "effect the trade," paying him three hundred dollars and borrowing three hundred dollars from him in the form of sixty-/ninety-day note. On 17 July 1847, Virginia, who was pregnant at the time of the purchase, gave birth to a boy, who was later given the name of Fernandez, but went by the name of Charles. When Proctor paid off the debt and asked for the title to the slaves, Austin argued that he could not give her the title for the baby until he had been named. Three years later, on a trip to New Orleans, Proctor decided to make that city her new home, and charged her agent in Mobile, James L. McKean, with effecting the transport of Virginia and the three-year-old boy. As the two slaves were boarding a boat in Mobile, however, the sheriff seized the child under a suit brought by Austin claiming title to the boy. In a subsequent jury trial, Austin said he had purchased Virginia and then sold her to Proctor. The baby, however, was his and he claimed ownership. The jury, appraising the child's value at eight hundred dollars (Proctor said the boy was worth three or four hundred dollars), awarded the boy to Austin. Proctor sued, and won a judgment; Austin appealed with a "Writ of Error" to the Alabama Supreme Court, but lost when the Court dismissed the writ.
Result: Granted; appealed; upheld.
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Repository: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
