Manuscript legal document. Fayette County, Texas, 18 May 1857. 10 pages, folio, 8 x 12 1/2 in. Bound with pink ribbon and green wafer seal at upper edge.

A fascinating docket of proceedings of a suit between Edward A. Williams and John Ingram regarding the sale of an enslaved woman named Francis. The document details all of the proceedings of the lawsuit, starting with the filing of claims on 14 August 1854 and the subsequent filings and orders for the next 3 years. Williams claimed that Francis was not of "sound mind and body" at the time and date of the sale, "but on the contrary was then and there diseased, disabled and infirm of body...maladies of which she was then lingering and suffering and of which she continued so to linger and suffer from said date until the day...when she died of said diseases and maladies." He further alleges "that said negro woman Francis...was unsound mind, being simple and incapable of understanding transacting business from mental infirmity..." Continuing his claim "that he expended and was compelled to lay out larger sums of money...nursing and taking care of said negro Francis...[for the] sum of $200."

The Judgment on 20 May 1857 found in favor of the defendant, however, the final entry on the docket the next day is the motion for a new trial. A remarkably complete listing of the proceedings in a lengthy trial in Texas.

Condition: split to wafer seal, else very fine.

[African Americana, African American History, Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Abolition, Manuscripts, Documents, Legal History, Ephemera]