Rebecca Simons, widow of Samuel B. Simons, charges that Montague Simons and Simon Moses cheated her out of her late husband's property. Rebecca and Samuel married 16 January 1813; Samuel "was taken ill with a pleurisy" and died intestate only eight days later. Rebecca states says that one day after her husband's funeral, her father-in-law, Montague Simons, and his confederate, Simon Moses, took her from Jacksonborough to Charleston, where they kept her for two days, demanding that she renounce her claim to Samuel's estate. The petitioner, "absent from her blood relations, without counsel or advice ... harrassed ... & intimidated," admits that she signed a deed of conveyance in exchange for $200; however, she claims that she "was ignorant of the extent of her renunciation" and is the victim of fraud. Her husband owned two lots with houses and stores, merchandise, and several slaves, an estate worth $4,000 or more. The petitioner asserts that she is entitled to inherit all of this property, because her husband was illegitimate and had no other legal heirs but her. She asks the court to cancel the deed and to restore the estate to her possession. [In a related petition, Samuel B. Simons is identified as "a free colored man."]
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina