Edward Penman, administrator of the estate of George Ogilvie, asks for the court to enforce a judgment that he won against the estate of the late William Richardson. In 1778 Richardson gave his bond to Ogilvie to purchase 8,000 pounds of indigo. Richardson died in 1786 before he discharged the debt. His estate passed into the hands of John Smyth and his widow Ann. In 1794 Ogilvie pressed suit against the estate and won a judgment two years later. In an effort "to render inefficient the judgment," however, Ann and others held a "fraudulent" sale of the estate property, including "upwards of one hundred negro slaves." Penman describes the clandestine sale, for which persons were employed "to put up advertisements on the trees in the neighbourhood, and to take down the same, as fast as they were put up," as well as the elaborate plan to transport the slaves in the night "through secret paths, and by the most circuitous route," to a sale where they were "in the course of minutes knocked off" to Richardson's family members at an average of "five pounds per head" and then "removed back their respective plantations." Penman asks the court to protect his creditor's rights against such collusion.
Or you may view all people.
Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
