Robert and Maria Heriot ask the court to appoint a new trustee for their trust estate and to allow them to replace two slaves sold out of the trust with two others. Maria Heriot owned slaves in her own right. The petitioners inform the court that they created a trust estate for Maria's slaves before they married in 1804, appointing Dr. Robert Brownfield to administer the trust "for the benefit of your Petitioners." Noting that Brownfield died, the Heriots report that they asked Benjamin D. Heriot and Thomas B. Clarkson to take over the trust. The petitioners therefore ask the court to appoint Heriot and Clarkson as the new trustees. The petitioners also recount that they have sold two of the slaves from the trust, Dinah and Billy. They cite that "Dinah was sold through inadvertence in the sale of a gang" of Robert's slaves and that they sold Billy "in consequence of his conduct having ... rendered it inexpedient, and ... unsafe, to have kept him." Since both slaves were valuable, Robert Heriot "regards it his duty to replace them by others." He owns two slaves named Rose and Tom, whom he wishes to add to the trust. The petitioners ask the court to permit the substitution.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
