Mar 29, 2018 - Sale 2471

Sale 2471 - Lot 28

Price Realized: $ 2,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Ivey, Hugh. Deed of manumission for his 26 slaves. Contemporary manuscript transcript, 13 x 7 3/4 inches; separations at folds, some tasteful modern repairs, a blank section of the final leaf detached. Sussex County, VA, 2 February 1826
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In this document, Virginia plantation owner Hugh Ivey (1777-1868) manumits 27 slaves: "After full and mature deliberation I am fully persuaded that freedom is the birthright of all mankind and that no law, human or divine, can give or hath given to me a just and equitable right to the labor or service of any human being without making to him or her a reasonable or stipulated compensation, therefor and wishing to fulfill in this case at least the golden rule to 'do unto others as I would they should do unto me' . . . relinquish, renounce and forever quit claim to the services of the aforenamed slaves." The slaves are named in the body of the document. This is not Ivey's original signed copy, but rather a transcript by a county clerk made at the time--quite possibly for the use of one of the emancipated slaves. Written on the integral blank leave in a different hand is "Jenny Morgan was born June 27th 1770."
This remarkable document is well-known to genealogical researchers, as it was recorded with the Sussex County clerk. They have found that Ivey was prosecuted in 1825 for "suffering his Negro woman Jenny to go at large and trade as a free person." Ivey and many of his free former slaves moved north to Ross County, Ohio not long after the manumission. Several of them appear in the Ross County records with the surname Ivey from 1827 onward. In the 1850 census, he was found in Ohio living with a younger mulatto couple, Jesse and Jane C. Redmond, both born in Virginia, and their children who were born in Ohio from 1832 onward. His 1865 will leaves his property to Joel Ivey and Jane Catherine Redmond, and he is buried with the Redmonds. It seems likely that the Jenny Morgan whose 1770 birth was recorded on this document was the Jinny manumitted by Hugh Ivey and the mother of his children, and that Jane Catherine Redmond (1816-1904) was their daughter.