Recorder - Manumission of Slaves

Recorder: Debbie Tiemann
Phone: (765) 973-9235
FAX: (765) 973-9341

Manumission of Slaves 1835

These documents came to light because of an E-Mail inquiry from David Diamond in Arizona. Mr. Diamond was interested in locating records of the manumission of slaves brought to Wayne County from North Carolina. After a couple of exchanges, we learned that the records were very likely to be in the Recorder's Office in the "Miscellaneous Records". Debbie Tieman, the chief deputy, remembered that Arnold Dean, a local historian, had come across those records in the middle of a book titled "Apprentices Indentures I". The record almost appears to be intentionally hidden. The record of manumissions was only found because Mr. Dean was creating his own index to the indentures book and stumbled across the five pages of manumissions. Fortunately, Mr. Dean was kind enough to leave a copy of his index with the Recorder, and this provided the trail we needed.

The documents are presented below in two forms- for fast access we have included Mr. Diamond's typescript of the documents. For those who are willing to wait through a lengthy download, actual scans of the documents are included as well. The average file size for the scans is roughly 500K. Also of great interest are Mr. Diamond's comments on the historical context surrounding this episode in history.

Note that the manumission on page 4 was witnessed by Levi Coffin.

Typescript of the documents

Comments on the documents

Document Scans

• Scan of Page One
• Scan of Page Two
• Scan of Page Three
• Scan of Page Four
• Scan of Page Five

Of related interest:
Waynet's Levi Coffin House page