Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 51

Price Realized: $ 469
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Butler, Mildred. Manumission, "restoring the sd Hannibal to all the privileges of a free man." 3 manuscript pages, 12 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, on one folding sheet, signed multiple times by Mildred and Richard P. Butler, with docketing on final blank; folds, minor foxing. Gallatin County, KY, 14 January 1828

Additional Details

This document begins with the manumission certificate filed with the county clerk: "I Mildred Butler . . . doth manumit, set free, & forever discharge from all further servitude my negro man slave named Hannibal, of a dark complexion, about five feet eight inches high and thirty seven years of age, of open countenance, large mouth and remarkably thick lips with a slight scar on the left side of his face occasioned by a burn, hereby restoring the sd Hannibal to all the privileges of a free man of coular." It is followed by the court minutes accepting this manumission, and the $500 bond which Butler filed to guarantee that Hannibal would not require public assistance. The woman granting the manumission, Mildred Hawkins Butler (1763-1833), was the widow of a militia general. The bond was co-signed by Mildred's son Richard Parker Butler (1792-1885). The manumission took place in Gallatin County, Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati and the Ohio-Indiana line. It includes one unusual line, asserting that it was "hereby restoring the sd Hannibal to all the privileges of a free man of coular"--suggesting that he has once previously been free.