{"petition":[{"petition_analysis_number":"21479502","petition_url":"https:\/\/dlas.uncg.edu\/petitions\/petition\/21479502","state":"Tennessee","county":"Washington","location_type":"County","file_day":18,"file_month":9,"file_year":1795,"filing_court":"Superior","end_day":0,"end_month":0,"end_year":0,"result":"","enslaved_count":3,"fpoc_count":2,"total_people_count":10,"repository":"Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee","abstract":"Margaret Lee requests that a writ of habeas corpus \"may immediately issue, directed to Samuel Gammon of Sullivan County, commanding him to appear before your Honors ... with the Bodies of Margaret Lee & her two children Maria & Abraham.\"  Born in Boston of free parents, Lee laments that she was \"suddenly seized\" at sunset while on a wharf and then \"bound with Cords, and hurried on Board of a Vessel\" that later landed in Maryland.  The petitioner decries that she was \"doomed to Servitude\" and that \"Labour, oppression & their attendant Grief, hovered around her.\"  Lee reveals that \"she communicated her situation to some benevolent Men, with a view of obtaining relief;\" however, her owner, fearing the \"truth might appear from Investigation, sold her.\"  Noting that she, \"for the period of twenty years, has suffered a Life of Servitude, in a Country, where she had inherited from her Parents Liberty,\" the petitioner and her two \"tender little Infants\" pray that the court may issue \"the most gracious Writ of Liberty ... a Habeas Corpus\" and that \"your Honors may take such Steps, as will give to your petitioner an opportunity of shewing that freedom was her Birthright.\"","subjects":[{"subject":"Sues for freedom (enslaved)"},{"subject":"Ships"},{"subject":"Kidnapping (FPOC)"},{"subject":"Family separated (Black)"}]}]}