Manuscript document signed by Justice of the Peace John Cunningham. [Bourbon County], Kentucky, June 1841. Docketed to verso with note by County Clerk Thomas P. Smith.

In 1833, Kentucky passed a law that was designed to increase the value of the local enslaved population. The act outlawed individuals from bringing slaves across state lines into Kentucky for the purpose of selling them. Though they could bring them for their own use, they were obligated to swear an oath agreeing not to sell the enslaved. The non-importation act was overturned in 1849.

The document here is an affidavit that John McNeill, an emigrant to Kentucky, was unaware of the statute and did not take the oath due to his ignorance. The document reads in part: “I, John H. McNeill do solemnly swear or affair that I emigrated to Kentucky with the view of becoming a Citizen thereof in good faith and that I was wholly ignorant of any law of the state of Kentucky requiring emigrants to take an oath respecting the slaves brought with them into this state”.

A John McNeil is listed in the 1840 Federal Census which also indicates he enslaved 6 individuals, possibly the oath taker here.

The document is written and signed by John Cunningham (1795-1864) who was born in Hardy County, Virginia but emigrated to Bourbon County, Kentucky in 1818 and served as Justice of the Peace from 1833 to 1850. He also served in the state senate and was noted as a strong supporter of Henry Clay. (William Henry Perrin, editor. History of Bourbon, Scott, Harrison and Nicholas Counties, Kentucky. 1882).

A very rare relic of a curious and short-lived antebellum slavery statute.







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