Eighty-one-year-old Mary Lorance asks the court to invalidate a bill of sale that conveyed her property, including a slave named John Solomon, to her neighbor, Joseph Burnett. Lorance explains that, when her husband died in 1853, she owned only John Solomon and $400. Having "no near relations," Lorance lived in this "almost helpless condition" alone, except for "her Boy John," whom she intended to emancipate by will at her death. Burnett proposed that she move in with his family, which she "consented to do, until she could get her money from the Clerk of the Court." While there, he convinced her that one of her husband's business relations intended to sue her for "a little negro girl" in Mississippi, in whom her husband's estate purportedly had "an interest." Burnett persuaded Lorance to let him act as her "special friend ... in this emergency" and induced her to temporarily convey the money and John Solomon to him. Lorance later learned that she executed documents that conveyed her property to Burnett absolutely and bound him in return to support her during her life. Charging that Burnett's conduct "from first to last was fraudulent & designed to deceive & impose on & defraud" her, the petitioner seeks the court's assistance in regaining her property.
Result: Granted; appealed; affirmed.
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Repository: Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee
