| County | Dorchester |
|---|---|
| Folio Number | THH 1:3 |
| Probate Date | 6/9/1852 will written 12/18/1851 |
| Name of Deceased | Martin L. Wright |
| Heirs | Negroes |
| Black Individuals Mentioned in Will | "With the sincerest desire to do what is right and becoming for my colored people and the community in which they live I find myself after an experience of thirty years as an owner and much longer period of close and anxious reflection on the situation & condition of the Colored Race, wholly at a loss to make satisfactory disposition of my poor servants - However well-satisfied we may profess to ourselves to be as to their origin and introduction amongst us, I preseume there is no one among us who will pretend to know or comprehend their destiny - and until an all - providence shall sufficiently disclose their condition will be but a speculative work - I feel that it is our imperative duty to treat them with great kindness and forbearance and to strive more than we have hitherto done to enlighten them so as to prepare them for a better and higher scale of sphere of existence - I sincerely trust that those into whose hands any of mine shall pass will feel it to to be their duty to treat them with the kindness due to children. Fortune to have his freedom after testator's decease and George to have his freedom after the 31st day of December 1860, Negro boy Aaron to have his freedom after testator's decease and to have testator's wearing apparel and $100 to be paid him in small amounts as he may need - and testator has a request of Aaron and all his other Negroes that "it is that he will live honest and sober the balance of his life as he has done while with me and that he will remember and strive to follow the advice which I have given him." John, Chase, Robert - son of Harriet, to have their freedom 1st of January 1865. Francis, Henry and Alexander to have their freedom the 1st of January 1870. Negro men Jacob and Thomas Chase are too old to set free, but "I commend them to the care and keeping of my Executor" and nephew Martin L. Smith. Remainder of testator's Negroes to nephew Martin L. Smith and testator hopes that he "will feel it to be his imperative duty to treat and take care with the greatest kindest idulgence my poor colored peopole when they come into their possission for if I believed the poor creatures could take care of themselves, I could cheerfully free every one of them." |
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[Author (if known)], Wills from Dorchester, Somerset, Worcester & Wicomico Counties of Maryland, 1783-1919, [Date (if known)], Enduring Connections: Exploring Delmarva’s Black History, Nabb Research Center, Salisbury University.
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