Good Things Happen to Those Who Wait...

[L Verge]

I had my hands on all those manumission papers today. There are 31 total, ranging in dates from 1781 to the mid-1850s, and all in very good condition -- clearly never having been carried around constantly by a free black in order to prove his freedom.

They are all from our county, and some of the leading citizens of that period are the ones issuing the papers. Several are given by female owners, with a few marked with an X and witnessed as such. On at least one is a declaration that freedom is being given because slavery is an abomination to man (or a phrase to that effect). Quite a few of the papers pertain only to children being manumitted.

The family that owns them has a history of being in county politics of some sort since the 1800s, and I suspect that these might be duplicate copies filed with county gov't. and then discarded (only to be saved) from county files sometime in the early-1900s. One ancestor during the 1850s was a county sheriff and had the duty of capturing and returning runaway slaves (i.e. Fugitive Slave Act). There is a clipping out of the county paper at that time in which that sheriff advertises that he has captured a runaway who will not tell where he came from. A description is given and a plea for the owner to come forward. If the owner does not appear, it is stated that the runaway will be sent to auction.