Robert Kelly seeks the return of property that he claims his nephews, Robert, James and John Stewart, swindled from him over the course of four years. The "slightly indebted" Kelly claims that his nephews preyed upon his "unfortunate practice of intoxication" and induced him to convey certain property to his wife, who would then move to her sister's house, wherein they had a "better opportunity to wheedle or trade" their mother out of the Kellys' property. When this plan proved "ineffectual," they used an "insidious hospitality" and proffered him more alcohol until he signed a deed transferring all of his property to them, in exchange for a "genteel support during his life." Kelly asserts, however, that the Stewarts neglected him, and, after his wife's death, they slowly removed from his home his remaining property, including slaves, livestock, corn, and fodder. The nephews left him with a slave named Dick and "an old decrepit female slave called Kate, but they did not leave him a pound of meat." Penniless and destitute, Kelly asks the court to set aside the deed of conveyance and to compel the Stewarts to account with him for their sale of his slaves, the income from his slaves' hire, and the value of his crops.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
