Trustees Peter Hair and William W. Houseal ask the court to nullify a trust agreement made between Samuel T. Agnew and Edward Stephens; John Coate and Lambert Jones join in said petition as agents of Agnew's creditors. The petitioners state that, in 1859, Samuel Agnew "made and duly executed his deed of assignment whereby he conveyed his whole estate of every kind and description to your orators William W. Houseal and Peter Hair." The petitioners prepared to sell this property, including thirty-two slaves, in April 1859, but Agnew unexpectedly stopped the sale, claiming that he had placed said land and slaves in trust for the benefit of his wife, Julia F. Stephens Agnew, three years earlier. The defendants produced the deed of conveyance by which they purportedly created this trust, but the petitioners charge that said deed was never recorded. They further charge that the 1856 deed is a fraud, prepared only after Agnew's creditors took possession of his property and with the object of defrauding said creditors. The petitioners ask that the 1856 deed be declared null and void and that their rights to the slaves and property placed in trust Samuel Agnew in 1859 for the benefit of his creditors be affirmed.
Result: Granted pro confesso.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
