In 1856, an elderly widow, Elendor Price, put her mark on a deed transferring her slave Little Ike to her son Silas Price; the next year, she signed away two more of her slaves, Isaac and Henry. She had no education, could not read or write, and was not informed of what she was signing. Elendor stated that she was "infirm in mind and body from old age and disease and uneducated and ignorant was wholly unable to attend to her farm and the business appertaining thereto." She trusted her two sons, Silas and James Price, to manage her business affairs. Later, she was "astonished" to discover that she had been "deprived of all right and title in the three slaves," and saddened because she was "deceived and defrauded in her old age by her own son." Elendor believes that the slaves "are of great value," worth three times as much as her other property, and that Silas, along with co-conspirator Johnson McCauley, plans to take the slaves away. She wishes to distribute the slaves among her six children and asks that the transfer deeds be "set aside and annulled."
Result: Dismissed.
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Repository: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
