Elizabeth Rachel Buer, orphaned at age six, asks the court to compel Hugh Campbell, her maternal uncle and the executor of her late father's will, to settle with her for her portion of the estate. Her father's will made provisions for her when she turned eighteen, but, until that time, Elizabeth "was thrown upon the charity" of various individuals until her paternal aunt, the wife of Dr. Mathew O'Driscoll, "took your Oratrix at about the age of fifteen into her own house and hath brought her up as one of her children." Now nineteen, Elizabeth complains that Campbell "will not make her estate payable to her." She accuses Campbell of pretending there is no longer any estate that she can "depend upon or expect." In addition, she charges that Campbell has misconstrued a mortgage among his stepmother's papers, intended to be a "confidential and specious" transaction, whereby her father conveyed five slaves to his mother-in-law, Rachel, in order to defeat his creditors. Lamenting that her uncle's actions will "leave her a miserable outcast on the pity of the wide world," she prays that "the breach of trust and confidence touching all and singular the premises be redressed and rectified" and that the transaction "touching the Sale of the Negroes be transferred to the credit of the Estate of Thomas Buer for the benefit of your Oratrix and the said Mortgage be delivered up and cancelled."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
