Southern Claims Commission Petitions

I was born in Liberty Co. a slave & became free after the raid came through. My master was Major Bacon. He had about 40 slaves – he was a good master. He sold me to McAllister – I belonged to him when the raid came through. I am 62 yrs old. I live on Belmont Chatham Co. Ga. I am a farmer. I am the claimant in this case.

My name is John Way, my age 49 years, my residence Rice Hope, Liberty Co. in the state of Georgia, and my occupation a farmer; I am the claimant and have a beneficial interest in the claim.

Remarks: The claimant has married since the war a second husband. The property claimed belonged to her first husband who is dead. It does not appear when he died nor is his loyalty or claimant’s satisfactorily proved. We therefore reject the claim.

Claimant is a widow. The property belonged to her husband who was in the Confederate Army. It don’t appear when he died, and there is no evidence of his loyalty except claimant’s assertion of the fact. We are not satisfied with the sufficiency of the evidence in support of it, and we are therefore constrained to reject the claim.

laimant is a widow whose husband died in 1862. He was conscripted she says. She swears to loyal sympathies and to feeding deserters. She calls as her witnesses her daughter and a man who was 14 years old when the war closed and they testify to her loyalty of course. We fail to find any loyal conduct or unequivocal indications of loyalty in the evidence, and we know of no reason aside from the proof why the claimant should have been loyal and all her neighbors disloyal. We reject the claim.

This claimant was a slave during the war. He says the mare charged was given him by his father and that he bought the rest of the property. His witnesses swear at random that he bought all the property. No particulars as circumstances are detailed. Only two witnesses and they fellow slaves are called as witnesses. No facts developed to show why this claimant should own more property than any other slave. And finally there is no sufficient and satisfactory evidence of ownership of claimant to justify the commissioners in charging the government with the value of this property and allowing compensation therefore to the claimant. We therefore reject the claim.

The claimant was a plantation slave during the war. His claim consists of a dozen items and he and two witnesses testify identically to the same number of articles in each item to the same number of pounds, and bushels and to the same value. A [words] and worthless as testimony for it is evident that the two witnesses swear right after the claimant in [two words] and whether he swears from his own knowledge and memory or according to instructions is doubtful. Most of the articles are such as slaves would consume for food and probably belonged to claimant’s owner. We cannot recommend payment of the claim.

The testimony of Wm. James, the brother of the claimant & his agent, and of Sharper Way his cousin is all the evidence in the case. All that is shown as to the claimant’s ownership of the property is – “Jupiter James owned it – he worked for it” – nothing more. What means of knowledge the witnesses had as to how clm’t acquired the property is not shown. Such proof of ownership of property by a slave, who was a slave when it was taken is not suff’t [sufficient]. Claim rejected.

John (Jack) Bacon Sr., formerly enslaved by Simon Frazier, applied for and was granted compensation for property taken by U.S. soldiers during Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864. Bacon, who was about 60 years old in 1873, was a foreman on Frazier’s Liberty County, Georgia, plantation. After Emancipation, Bacon bought land from William W. Winn and farmed it. One of his witnesses, Washington Bacon, testified that many of Frazier’s enslaved people had belonged first to “old Major Bacon” and that they had taken the Bacon name at Emancipation. Henry Bacon and Sandy Powell also testified, as did Simon Frazier’s son James.

The claimant was a free colored man. He swears to the ownership and taking of the property but is not confirmed by witnesses and we must decline to make an allowance simply on his unsupported statement.

This is another of the class of claims of 20.645 to which refer. The clm’t was 21 years old at the beginning of the war. In reply to Q 70 he says “Slave at end of the war” & “owned the property before the war & worked & bought it.” So he owned the property not only when a slave but before he was of age.

In this case Lyman B. Mallard testifies again that when he was 5 years old he knows clm’t was allowed to own & did own property. Cassels is atty.

Edmund Bacon lost a horse, buggy, chickens, hogs and other provisions to Sherman’s Army when soldiers came foraging in December 1864 on Lawrence Winn’s plantation, where Bacon was the enslaved foreman. Bacon may have used the name Quarterman too, as his original Southern Claims Commission petition was filed under that name by attorney Raymond Cay Jr. He received $194 from the U.S. government for his claim.

When the Army came and took his things, Bacon testified, also present were John Lambert, Richard Harden, Joe Bacon and Scipio King. John Harris and James Stacy testified for Bacon in his hearing. Bacon said he went to the U.S. Army camps and cooked and washed for them for $15 a month, though he only stayed with them nine weeks. Then he went to Savannah for a year after the Army came, then returned to Winn’s land to farm.

This is one of a number of claims filed by colored claimants from Liberty Co. Geo. The title to the property is not satisfactorily proved. The claimant, Marshall, is not sworn at all; he seems very nearly to have dropped out of the case in the testimony; his disappearance is not accounted for. Way says he lived in slavery until the end of the war. When former slaves present claims they must make strict proof of title. That title must at least be one which is recognized by their masters & it must so appear in the proofs. They fail to make such proof in this case & the claim is disallowed.

The claimant lived, according to his own testimony, in bondage, until the war closed. In all cases where former slaves file claims, we require strict proof of the ownership of the property. We are not to suppose that a slave from before the war ‘till Dec ‘64 was in possession & the absolute owner of eleven head of cattle, 25 hogs, a horse, buggy, harness & considerable other property in all to the value of nearly a thousand dollars without reasonable proof to establish such an exceptional case. This is one of a number of cases of colored claimants in Liberty Co Ga filed by the same attorney in which the testimony was taken by the same Com’r at about the same date. To say that this testimony was all machine-work would not improperly characterize it.

In 1864, Jane Holmes, a formerly enslaved woman in Liberty County, Georgia, saw the cattle she had earned (and owned) by her hard labor shot down by soldiers, leaving the carcasses for the buzzards. In 1872, this strong woman, whose husband had been an enslaved driver (foreman) for Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, filed a claim against the U.S. Government for the lost property. Mrs. Holmes testified in 1873 that she was 60 years old and that she was living on the Lyons Plantation in Riceboro, Liberty County, where she worked in the fields. During the Civil War, she was living at Briar Bay plantation and, she said, “When I heard the guns I used to go and pray for them [the Union soldiers] and I always prayed for them night and day.”

Mrs. Bird in her testimony says that she had three sons in the Confederate Army to whom she provided clothes, money & horses & supplies whenever she could get a horse and that her and her husband’s sympathies were with the Rebellion. Claim disallowed.

The U.S. Southern Claims Commission petition by a formerly enslaved woman of Liberty County, Matilda McIntosh, is very revealing of the Commission’s biases. Mrs. McIntosh had belonged to George W. Walthour before Emancipation, and afterwards lived with Elizabeth Somersall, a white woman who had presented her own claim against the government for property taken by the U.S. soldiers in 1864. The Commission did not believe that Mrs. McIntosh had owned the property she claimed, because she produced no white witnesses or any members of her master’s family, and it seemed improbable to the Commission that she could have earned enough by sewing in her spare time to buy a horse and buggy. Mrs. McIntosh testified that she had lived with Walthour’s wife in Walthourville and was a seamstress. She testified, “I sympathized with the union, sir. I knew they was come to give us free. I heard about it all the time in whispers and I was very glad. I did not say much but those I could trust I used to say to they are coming to make us free I am very glad.”

Claimant is a widow and inherited the property for which she claims compensation from her husband. Her loyalty is established by her own statement and the testimony of her witnesses. The ownership and taking of the property by soldiers of Gen Sherman’s command in December 1864 is also established. We allow the sum of seventy four dollars.

Transcript ofSouthern Claims Commission Petition By Thomas Axson [NOTE: Only the application was contained in this case file online, no testimony or resolution.] Claimant’s Name

Osgood testified in 1873 that he had been born into slavery in Liberty County, that he was about 58 years old, and that he was still living and farming on John E. Baker’s land, where he had previously been held enslaved. He said he became free when “the Yankees came in and told us we were free.” Before that, he added, “My feelings were if it was the will of the Lord that if our freedom was to come it would be much to my satisfaction. I cast all the influence I had and could give on the side of the Yankees I knew if the war didn’t go on our freedom would not come.”

William Law testified in 1877 that he was 62 years old and had lived in Liberty County all his life. He said that R.Q. Baker had been his owner and that he was not testifying for him because he was dead. He claimed to have owned a gray mare, a set of new harness, 4 meat hogs, 15 stock hogs, 12 chickens, plus clothing, bed clothing, lard, pots, and hats, all of which he said were taken by Sherman’s Army while they were foraging in Liberty County in December 1864. His initial 1872 application had said that he would call Caesar Mallard and John Wilson as witnesses, but in 1877 when it came time to testify, he only brought Joseph McDaniel, who testified that he was 41 years old and had also lived in Liberty County all his life. He said he had known William Law from boyhood and that they lived on the same place.

Amy Roberts testified that she was 30 years old in 1877, and her claim was disallowed on the basis that she would only have been about 13 years old when the war started and thus was unlikely to have acquired the relatively large amount of property she claimed: 24 bushels of corn, 6 bushels of peas, 19 bushels of rice, 10 hogs, 75 pounds of pork, 40 head of fowls, plus beds, bedding, and kitchen furniture, which she valued at $188. The property all belonged to her, not to her husband, she said. Amy testified that she was held in slavery by E.B. Way and that she had been married about one year before the war. She said that her husband now lived with her but “was separated by his Master from me during the war.” She added that she had three children: Henry Roberts, not quite 3; Leonora 1 year old; and the other an infant. E.B. Way was not testifying for her because he was dead, she said.

In 1879, Jack Walker said that he was then 60 years old, and had lived in Liberty County’s 1132d district for 50 years. He had not mentioned owning property in his testimony for Baggs, but in his own testimony, he stated that he had lost to the soldiers one horse, a saddle and bridle, 20 hogs, 2000 lbs fodder, 150 pounds sugar, 50 bushels of corn, and 50 chickens. This was a large amount of property for an enslaved man, and the Commission denied the claim on the basis that “we do not feel justified in allowing claims for persons formerly slaves without more satisfactory proof that they owned the property than this [claimant] has furnished.” Walker had only testified that he had earned the property by working at nights and weekends, and the Commission normally wanted more detail; not providing it was the fault of the Special Commissioner taking the testimony and Walker’s lawyer, M.J. O’Donoghue.

The claimant is an old colored woman – was the slave of George Walthour. “sewed , milked & did housework.” Her husband belonged to Mr. Howe & was a favorite slave & had many privileges & owned some property. He died about three years after the war. That he owned the property claimed is highly improbable. 20 cows would make a good large dairy for a northern farmer; and as her husband “was a driver – did not work in the field but just overlooked” it is not easy to see how he could manage & take care of the 20 cows. The proof of the number is wholly unsatisfactory. She says “he counted them off from the other cattle as they went by” at the time of the raid.

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