John, a mulatto, claims that his grandmother, "an Irish Subject of the Kingdom of Great Britian living in Ireland," agreed to serve a seven-year indenture in return for passage to the United States. Arriving in Virginia sometime in the 1780s, the ship captain bound her to the Offutt family. She died two or three years later, "leaving two free white Children." One of these children, Love, was "raised in a negro quarter and treated in every Respect as a slave." Love bore "two bastard Mulatto Children" and was about to sue for her freedom when the Offutt family "run her off" to Kentucky to live with another branch of the family. In Kentucky, Love married a slave named Frank, who was freed upon his master's death. In 1813 or 1815, when her son John was about five years old, Love sued for and received her freedom, but the Offutts took her four children to Louisville to prevent them from suing as well. The two oldest children did eventually obtain their freedom, but John was "run off" to Missouri, where he has lived for the last eighteen to twenty years as a slave of James Offutt. John asks for permission to sue as a poor person for his freedom. Fearing that Offutt will remove him from the court's jurisdiction if not required to give bond, the petitioner also asks for the court's protection while his suit is pending. [Related depositions add much more detail and directly contradict this petition in important ways, such as the race of the people named.]
Result: Petition granted; plea of trespass filed, granted, appealed, reversed and remanded.
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Repository: Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City, Missouri
