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1853 Court Declaration to Prove a Black Womans FREE Status Norfolk, Virginia

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:240.00 USD Estimated At:400.00 - 500.00 USD
1853 Court Declaration to Prove a Black Womans FREE Status Norfolk, Virginia
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Black History
Court Declaration to Prove a Black Woman's “Free” Status
March 17, 1853-Dated, Manuscript Court Declaration to Prove a Woman's “Free” Status, Norfolk County Court (Virginia), Choice Very Fine.
Rare original Court Certification Declaration, handwritten in dark brown ink on light blue lined paper, dated March 17, 1853 by James Hargroves, made before a Norfolk (Virginia) County Court to establish the “Free” status of a woman, named Mary Rix (maiden name of Robinson). Mr Hargroves swore before the court that Mary was born of a Free woman, which meant that Mary was not a Slave. This document is from a troubling time period in the United States when the Abolitionist movement and the immoral pro-Slavery South was coming to a boiling point in the run up to the start of the civil war in 1861. A very collectible Black History and Slavery related document measuring 4.5” x 8”, during the last decade of Slavery in Virginia. This court statement reads, in full as follows:

"I, James Hargroves, do certify that Mary Rix or Beacher (sic) the wife of Tom Rix or (illegible) was formerly Mary Robinson, she was born free in Nansemond she was the daughter of Betsy Robinson who was free, I knew them well her mother resided for sixteen years on the same farm on which she resides - her name is Mary Ann Martha Robinson - she has been residing in the county of Norfolk ever since February 1850. Her character while residing in the County of Nansemond was very good, never having heard any compliant about her given under my hand this 17th March 1853. (Signed) James Hargroves".
In 1663 Virginia, adopted the principle in slave law that children were born into the status of their mother, rather than taking the status of their father, as was then customary for English subjects under English common law. This meant that children of slave mothers were also slaves, regardless of their fathers and ethnicity. The population of free African Americans increased in a number of ways: (1) children born to colored free women; (2) mulatto children born to white indentured or free women; (3) mixed-race children born to free Indian women; (4) freed slaves; and (5) slaves who escaped.

In 1850, Congress passed the controversial Fugitive Slave Act. The Act required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of the Northern free states had to cooperate in this law. In 1857, the US supreme Court ruling of Dred Scott v. Sanford effectively denied citizenship to all black people. Southern states also passed harsh laws regulating the conduct of free blacks, in several cases banning them from entering or settling in the state.

In Mississippi, a free negro could be sold into slavery after spending ten days in state. Arkansas passed a law in 1859 that would have enslaved every free black person still present by 1860; although it was not enforced, it succeeded in reducing Arkansas's population of free blacks to below that of any other slave state. A number of Northern states also restricted the migration of free blacks, with the result that emancipated blacks had difficulty finding places to legally settle. In January 1863, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the enslaved in Confederate-held territory.

Nansemond is an extinct locality that was located in the Virginia colony and later the commonwealth of Virginia. Nanesmond County was started in 1646 and was named for the Nansemond tribe who lived along the Nansemond river. This area is now the city of Suffolk, Virginia.