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Documenting 250 with the State Archives: Ned Griffin’s Battles for Freedom, Part II

Within seven months after his honorable discharge from the Continental Line, Ned Griffin had been betrayed, brutalized, and re-enslaved. In Griffin’s words, “some Time after Your Petitioners Return he was Seized upon by said Kitchen and Sold to a Certain Abner Roberson who now holds me as a Servant.” Somehow, Griffin found help to write and submit a petition “to be released from slavery” to Edgecombe County’s Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for its February 25, 1783 convening. The court read the petition and referred it to the state General Assembly, and the next day the sheriff received a warrant to arrest Abner Robinson on Griffin’s charges of trespass, assault and battery, and false imprisonment. Robinson served time in prison until the county court met again in May or until he could post £2,000 bail, £1,000 of which was a required payment for damages—the largest fine imposed by the Edgecombe County Court that year. Records do not indicate that the county punished Kitchen for his role.

old writing on yellowed paper
Abner Robinson bail bond note, February 28, 1783, Edgecombe County Civil Action Papers, 1783 folder 1, CR.37.325.13 Transcription: This 28th day of February Anno Dom 1783The condition of the above obligation is such that If the above bound Abner Robinson doth make his Person-^al appearance before the Justices of the next Court of Pleas and quarter sessions to be held for said County at the Courthouse in Tarborough on the fourth Monday in May next then and there to answer Edward Griffin a plea of Trespass assault Battery and false Imprisonment, Damage one thousand  Pounds Specie then the above Obligation [bail had been set at £2,000] to be void & of none Effect or Else to Remain in full force & Virtue Signed Seald and abner Robinson [seal]  Delivered in prison  Benj^a Dicken [seal] Peter Cartwright  William Fort Jesse Drake [seal]

Before the state legislature considered the case the following year (April 1784), county officials collected testimony from William Griffin—Ned’s former enslaver—military officers, and other witnesses to his enlistment agreement, including the county sheriff and constable. After reviewing the petition and supporting documents, the General Assembly passed “An Act for Enfranchising Ned Griffin, Late the Property of William Kitchen,” concluding, “Ned Griffin . . . shall forever hereafter be in every respect . . . a freeman . . . and he is hereby enfranchised and forever delivered and discharged from the yoke of slavery.”

Ned settled near Griffin family members in Edgecombe County and eventually purchased land in 1801. Although the state had granted Ned land in Tennessee as a reward for his Continental Line service, it is unlikely he reaped those benefits. The agent appointed to distribute Ned Griffin’s land was involved in large-scale fraud associated with North Carolina’s Secretary of State, James Glasgow. In many cases, government officials and speculators profited from the land grants, rather than veterans and their heirs.

The 1800 census listed “Griffin, Edward (Mulatto)” as a free man of color with no other household members. If Ned had a relationship with an enslaved woman, a marriage would not have been legally recognized and any children would have shared their mother’s enslaved status. Although records do not show a family living with Ned, they do prove that he maintained at least some type of supportive relationship with the Griffin family. At Ned’s death in 1802, Zachariah Griffin, William and Oney’s oldest son and Ned’s neighbor, was listed in Ned’s estate papers as one of four people who had lent him money. Ned’s death near the age of 40 and his lack of legal heirs meant that no one applied to the federal government for a Revolutionary War pension in his name to expand documentation of his life and military service. Fortunately, however, the State Archives preserves his own words within his 1784 petition, as well as additional documents that help shed light on the life of a man who succeeded in fighting multiple battles for freedom.

 

References, Part 2