(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) Boutcher Alexander; et al Testimony

Sale 2503 - Lot 40

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Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Boutcher, Alexander; et al. Testimony that a mixed-race slave had actually been born free to a white mother. Autograph Document Signed, 13 1/4 x 7 3/4 inches; folds, minor wear, irregular tear in lower margin. Np, 15 July 1826

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This document contains two affidavits regarding a man named George Washington Sewell. First is the testimony of a barely literate man named Alexander Boutcher: "A collard man by the name of Gorge Washinton Sewell come to me to no if I new aneything of his being free bornd. A whit woman by the name of Nancy Sewell had a cullard child named Gorge in our neighborhood by a black man by the name of Ned, who rase the child about two or three an twentey yearse ago, and I beleive this to be the saim boy." Next is a similar testimony in the same hand, signed with a mark by William Nicholson. A final note adds that the child was born near the Little Falls of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, VA, just across the river from the Maryland-Washington border. Sewell was apparently raised as a slave, and this testimony represented his best hope for freedom.