#52Ancestors: Week 8 – Elizabeth Thomas – Free Woman of Color

This is week eight of the 2015 #52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge where a group of u52ancestors-2015 Images blog about a different ancestor for each week of the year.  To learn more about the 52 Ancestor Challenge visit Amy Johnson’s site at Amy’s website.

Black History Month

February is Black History Month.  African Americans have a difficult time tracing their ancestors. I believe genealogists have a fiduciary responsibility to pass along any information that can be gleaned to help others find their roots.  I knew that some of my ancestors owned slaves. Could I find anything information about them to pass along.

Searching Google eBooks, I found a court case involving a known ancestral cousin.

Elizabeth Thomas, F.W.C v Generis & Al

Elizabeth Thomas’s emancipation case was heard in the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1840. She was suing for her right to be a free woman of color. She won her freedom by Ipso facto.

Thomas had lived in Illinois, a state that prohibited slavery, prior to being taken to Louisiana. While in Louisiana, she was sold to another slave owner for $1,000. Thomas’s story starts in Virginia. In her suit, she states that she was born free in the state of Virginia. Around 1814, as a child, she was somehow acquired by Oliver C. Vanlandingham, Senior. Vanlandingham is my fourth great grand uncle. From there, Thomas was taken to Kentucky.

 

Elizabeth remained at the Vanlandingham farm in Muhlenberg County, KY until 1832. She had been ill for some time and wanted to go to the doctor in Shawneetown, IL. Vanlandingham’s overseer brought Thomas to the Illinois doctor for treatment. Vanlandingham had a merchant store in Shawneetown at the time. He also owned a plantation in Baton Rouge, LA. It is because she lived in Illinois, that Thomas asserted that she was emancipated due to Illinois law.

 

Thomas lived at the Vanlandingham home for about five years. While living there, she was under the care of Dr. Posey. In 1837, she was transported down to the Louisiana plantation. Shortly after that, she was sold.  Thomas then files a lawsuit stating she is a free woman of color (F. W. C) and cannot be made a slave again simply by being conveyed to Louisiana.

 

Illinois law stated that slavery could not be introduced into the state. Judge Scates opinion of Illinois law is that a slave states that a slave held in involuntary servitude becomes immediately free by the constitution (Illinois). Thomas resided in Illinois with the consent of her master. Being free previously, Ipso facto, by that very fact; she could not be made a slave again.

Vanlandingham’s counsel tried to say that Thomas was taken to Illinois without his knowledge. That she was allowed to see a doctor for humanitarian reasons. That he owned a business there, but not a home. However, Thomas had to live somewhere for five years. And, it was the Shawneetown home belonging to Vanlandingham. The warrantor to the purchase of Thomas contradicted the counsel testimony. The Judges sided with Thomas.

 

I don’t know what Elizabeth Thomas did after gaining her freedom. Vanlandingham passed away in 1856. He owned over a hundred slaves at one point in his life.

 

Ownership of those slaves passed to his son, O. C. Vanlandingham, Junior. Junior joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War. When he return home to his plantation after the war, he found his home, and crops destroyed. The slaves had run off.

 

With the Louisiana property gone, O.C. junior, returned to Paradise, Kentucky to the other family property. On the 1870 Census, he is enumerated among several black families in the area.

 

Sources:
Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana …, Volume 16 Louisiana. Supreme Court, Branch Walthus Miller, Thomas Curry, A. T. Penniman & Company, 1841 (Google eBook)
Alternate source: http://bit.ly/1A5iLAk

 

A History of Muhlenberg County, Otto Arthur Rothert, J.P. Morton, 1913 – Muhlenberg County (Ky.) (Google eBook)

1870 U.S. census, population schedules. NARA microfilm publication M593, 1,761 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Paradise, Muhlenberg, Kentucky; Roll: M593_490

 

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