Case ID: mass_4/html/0473-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Parsons, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Inhabitants of Dighton, Plaintiffs in Error, versus The Inhabitants of Freetown.
    Of the settlement of slaves. [After manumission, a slave retains the settlement oí his master till another is gained. — Ed.]
    This writ of error was brought to reverse a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas for this county, rendered in December last, by which the settlement of Dinah Walker, a pauper, was determined to be in Dighton.
    
    *The facts on which the Court below certify that the [ * 540 ] judgment was founded, were, that the said Dinah was, more than twenty years since, lawfully married to one Pomp Walker, a black man, who had formerly been a servant to Colonel Elnathan Walker, deceased, and was appraised at fifty dollars, as part of the personal estate of said Elnathan ; that the said Pomp lived with the administrator of said estate in Taunton, until the year 1779, when he was discharged from any further claims of the administrator for his services, and returned into the town of Dighton, and was married as before stated, and continued to reside there until his death ; that the overseers of the poor of Dighton, on the 11th of December, 1805, gave notice in writing to the overseers of the poor of Freetown, that said Dinah had become chargeable to said town of Dighton, and requested them to remove her to Freetown, and pay the expense that had accrued to Dighton for her support; to which notice the overseers of Freetown gave no answer in writing within two months from the time of receiving such notice, nor at any other time.
    The writ of error was briefly spoken to by Baylies for the plain tiffs in error, and Wheaton for the defendants in error, and the opinion of the Court was delivered as follows by
   Parsons, C. J.

The Common Pleas have sent up a statement of facts on which the judgment was given, that we may revise, and, if necessary, correct their proceedings. The statement is not very accurately drawn up. It does not appear in what town Pomp’s former master had his settlement, nor whether Dinah was, in fact, free, or a reputed slave. She must, therefore, be considered by us as free, when married ; but as enough appears in the case to decide wheth er or not Dinah’s settlement was in Dighton, we do not send the case back for a restatement.

Pomp being and continuing to be a reputed slave until 1779, he was settled in the same town with his master, deriving his settlement from him, as the slave was the personal property of his ma« ter, and could not be legally separated from him. [ * 541 ] Pomp was the slave of Elnathan Walker; at * his decease intestate. He, then, as the personal estate of the deceased, became the property of Peter Walker, the administrator, and acquired the settlement of his new master, which was in Taunton; and there he lived with, and served, him until 1779, when he became free by the manumission granted by his master. He then returned to Dighton, and married the pauper Dinah.

As a settlement in Dighton could not then be gained by residence, Pomp's settlement remained in Taunton, and in the same town Dinah acquired a derivative settlement with her husband. Had Dinah been a slave when she married Pomp, and so under the legal control of her master, it would have deserved further consideration, before it had been decided that she gained a new derivative settlement by her marriage. But the case does not state that she had ever been a slave, and we cannot presume it. So if Pomp, her husband, had been a slave when he married Dinah, it might well have been questioned if she had gained a new settlement with a husband, who, being the property of another, had no claim to the service of the wife ; nor would she have had any claim on her husband for maintenance.

But in the case at bar, Pomp, when free, and not settled in Taunton, married Dinah, a free woman, who also by marriage became settled in Taunton. Dighton, therefore, is not her place of settlement ; and the judgment must be reversed, with costs, which are given in cases like the present by the statute of 1793, c. 59, § 11. 
      
       Vide Winchendon vs. Hatfield, in Error, ante, 123.