Catherine Bodine's Will
Court of Appeals of Kentucky
From the Nelson County Court. The will—which directs that certain slaves shall 6e set 'free at future periods: question whether they can prosecute a writ of error to revise the judg’t of the county court, rejecting the will! Slaves, directed, by will, to be set free after designated peripda, must be deemed to be still slaves —each till the time for bis emancipation arrives.
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From the Nelson County Court. The will—which directs that certain slaves shall 6e set 'free at future periods: question whether they can prosecute a writ of error to revise the judg’t of the county court, rejecting the will! Slaves, directed, by will, to be set free after designated peripda, must be deemed to be still slaves —each till the time for bis emancipation arrives. Slaves are considered as property; the privilege of asserting rights, by judicial proceedings, is not, in general, conceded to them: yet, under pur system, they are considered as human beings, not wholly divested p.f…
1Opinion of the CourtChief Justice Robertson
A paper purporting to. be the last will of Catherine Bodine—in which, among other things, she declared that her slave Jenny should be ‘••set free” whenever she should cease child-bearing, and that other slaves should be “sei free” after designated periods no.t yet expired—having been exhibited by those persons, in the proper County Court, for probatej and rejected by the judgment of that Court, the same persons.^prosecute this writ of error against the other devisees: and the right to prosecute the writ in the names of the plaintiffs in error, being questioned, must first be decided, as a.…
2Cited by1 opinion
- Singleton v. SingletonCourt of Appeals of Kentucky · 1848