In 1839, Robert Dawson, a free person of color, purchased his wife Jenny Dawson, for $212, promising to pay David Coltrane fifty dollars a year until the debt was paid. During 1839, Dawson worked for Coltrane for eleven months, earning fifty dollars. Suddenly, however, his wife disappeared. He quickly learned that Coltrane had sold Jenny, also called Jane, to James Moss, who sold her to Benjamin Carter and Robert King, "traders in negroes, & who your orator believes intend conveying his said slave wife Jenny Dawson out of the limits of this state." He asks the court to issue a subpoena to prohibit them from taking his wife outside the jurisdiction of the court. In his related answer, Coltrane contends that he had never relinquished title to Jenny and that Jenny had become dissatisfied with the arrangement passed between Coltrane and her husband. In fact, according to Coltrane, Jenny had asked him to sell her to Moss.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
