Birney v. Richardson

Judge Marshall did not sit in this case.

This appeal is prosecuted for reversing a judgment in detinue, obtained by the appellees, Landie Richardson and Elizabeth Ford, as the surviving legatees of Thomas Richardson, their deceased father, against James Birney, the surviving husband of one of the deceased co-legatees, whom he married, in the year 1800, and who died in 1834, about a year prior to the commencement of this action, for fifteen slaves, fourteen of whom are the children and grand-children of the fifteenth, named Esther; who was the property of the testator, and who, then childless,…