Delphine, a woman of color, represents that when she was fourteen, in 1812, she was sold by her master, Don Francisco De Rianor, to Dominick Seghers, for the sum of $600. Thereafter, Don Antonio D’Argote paid Seghers $500 for the latter’s commitment to educate Delphine until she had reached the legal age of thirty, at which time he was bound to emancipate her. Seghers honored the agreement and Delphine was "instructed in the art of sewing" until she was taken "with force and arms" to jail to be sold to satisfy Seghers’s debts. Delphine claims that she was placed "among slaves of the worst description, to the manifest injury of both her morals and her instruction.” She asks that John B. Labatut and Emile Sainet, the syndics of Seghers’s creditors, be enjoined from selling her as a slave. She requests that the court honor the terms of the agreement between Seghers and D’Argote, and allow that only her services be sold until she reaches the legal age of emancipation. She prays to be hired out by the sheriff to someone who will agree to continue her apprenticeship and to emancipate her.
Result: Denied; appealed.
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Repository: University of New Orleans