Eighteen-year-old Henry Davis asks the court to render "null and void" his "pretended indenture of apprenticeship" to Thomas Knighton. Knighton acted under the auspices of an act of 1793 that allowed "the child or children of any pauper or vagrant, or the child or children of lazy, indolent and worthless free negroes" to be bound out as apprentices. Davis denies that he was "a pauper, vagrant, lazy or indolent and worthless" and instead states that at the time of his seizure, he "was regularly and industriously employed and earning a competent and sufficient livehood." Davis asks to be released from the seven-year term of servitude.
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Repository: Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland
