Rebecca Turner and Joseph Price seek the return of five slaves. In 1813, Turner purchased the slaves from her late husband’s estate for $3500. In 1817, 73-year-old Turner, being "very infirm ... and being incapable to attend to the said negroes in the cultivation of her land,” agreed to allow her son, Mathias Turner, to “take the care and management of the negroes.” Being “ignorant aged and illiterate,” the petitioner signed a document that she believed confirmed the agreement she made with her son; instead, it was “an absolute bill of sale ... expressing a consideration of Eighteen hundred dollars.” In 1818, Mathias sold the slaves to Col. Wilson Nesbitt for $2550, though both parties knew such a sale to be fraudulent. Turner and Joseph Price, executor to her husband’s estate, confronted her son and Nesbitt, demanding return of the slaves. When refused, Turner and Price brought suit against both men, but Mathias died shortly after it was served. Nesbitt and Mathias’s widow, Molly Turner, now refuse to deliver up the slaves or account for their hires. The petitioners therefore pray that both be subpoenaed and that the ownership of said slaves be determined by the court. This suit continues in various incarnations until 1842.
Result: Granted; appealed; affirmed; reversed; revived; dismissed.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
