Jane McKinney, through her next friend Jesse Harris, asks that Frances McKinney be compelled to turn over a slave named January to Harris. The petitioner cites a court decree from a previous suit that she filed against her husband, Benjamin McKinney, wherein the court granted her as alimony "one half of the Nett income of the defendant." The court empowered Harris to seize January, who was Benjamin's only identifiable property. Jane asserts, however, that her estranged husband "fraudulently sold" January to Frances McKinney before he departed to parts "unknown" and that Frances "got the said negro into her possession and for some time held him in close confinement," based on this "fraudulent sale." The court then authorized Harris to "retake the said property," but when Harris tried to do so, he discovered that Frances "hath actually sent off [the slave] or caused [him] to be sent off in a secret manner." Jane asks the court to compel Frances to "deliver up" the slave or compensate her for his value. Frances McKinney, for her part, denies a "feigned sale" and has produced an 1817 receipt for $850 for her purchase of the slave.
Result: Partially granted.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
