Samuel Bryan, a free man of color, prays for a writ of habeas corpus to secure a release from jail. Recounting that "he is confined as a runaway slave" in jail, Bryan attests that "on the contrary" he "was born of free parents in the town of Kingston in the Isle and of Jamaica & that he was born a subject of the King of Great Brittin." He further reports that, when he was thirteen years old, he was apprenticed to James Johnson to learn to be a carpenter; after Johnson died, Bryan became an assistant cook on a ship sailing from New York to different ports. Bryan asserts that he left his ship in New Orleans and boarded another boat bound for New York and that the captain of said boat committed him to jail as "your petitioner has no certificates of freedom." He asks that he be released from jail.
Result: Granted.
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Repository: Center for American History, the University of Texas, Austin, Texas
