American Historical Ephemera & Photography, including African Americana

One page, 7 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. Jessamine County Court seal stamped in ink to lower left.

"I Daniel B. Price clerk of the county court for the county afs'd. do certify that Nathaniel Dunn Executor of James Dunn dec'd, at the November County Court 1838, produced and acknowledged in open court a deed of Emancipation to Perry a negro man, twenty three years of age, five feet and one half inch high, black complexion with a scar in his left eye brow, and I do certify that the said boy Perry is entitled to full freedom and all the privileges of a freeman as fully as if he were born free. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and the seal of said court this 26th day of November 1838."

Major Daniel Branch Price (1789-1860) was born in Powhatan County, Virginia, but his family soon moved to Kentucky during the early years of its statehood. Price became deputy clerk of Jessamine County under Samuel H. Woodson, and then clerk after his predecessor resigned in 1816. Price would hold the office for an incredible 35 years, until 1851. He first married the daughter of Col. Joseph Crockett, Eliza, who died in the 1832 cholera epidemic. He then married the daughter of Rev. Robert Stuart and Hannah Todd, Mary Jane Stuart, in 1836. A son from his first marriage, Samuel Woodson Price (1828-1918) would go on to become a Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General, commanding the 27th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.

In the 1830 Federal Census, Daniel is listed as enslaving 4 persons, including 2 females under the age of 10, one male between the ages of 10 and 23, and one male between the ages of 24 and 35. The Perry referenced in the manumission document featured here would have been around 15 years of age in 1830. By 1840, he was enslaving 7 people, and by 1850 the number had grown to 12.

A reproduction of this deed is housed in the John Winston Coleman Jr. Collection on slavery in Kentucky, 1780-1940, at the University of Kentucky.