Lamb Stevens, a free man of color “about the age of seventy five years," represents that his granddaughter Phoebe, whom he owned as a slave, "got as an Employer one C Alfs a Comparative stranger to the Country." While working for Alfs, a white woman accused Phoebe of stealing. Alfs convinced Stevens that he alone "could defend and protect your Orators grand Child from the dreaded effects of this prosecution" and successfully persuaded Stevens to execute a "pretensive" bill of sale for Phoebe. Alfs did not pay any purchase money and assured Stevens that he would return the bill when Phoebe was cleared of any wrongdoing. When the court found "no proof to fix the guilt on Phoebe," Stevens requested the false bill of sale from Alfs, but Alfs insisted that he now had legal title to Phoebe. Decrying that “Ten thousand dollars would not induce him to sell his grand Child,” Stevens asks the court to order Alfs to return the "pretended" bill of sale, to deliver Phoebe, and to account for her hires. In his decision for Lamb Stevens, Justice Benjamin F. Dunkin charged that the "transaction on the part of the defendant is one of the most unblushing attempts to perpetrate fraud and pervert the course of justice that has stained the records of the country."
Result: Granted.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
