Raynor HCA 2013-07
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/18/2013
Booklet, “Chicago’s First Great Lawsuit,” Eugene Prussing, 1915, The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 16pp., with separate cover, fine. The booklet is endorsed on the title page by the author to his grandson. The case, the story of which is told in the following pages, may not have been Chicago's first lawsuit, but it probably was Chicago's first great lawsuit. It is entitled Forsyth et al. v. Nash and was begun in the court of the parish and city of New Orleans where it was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. It was then appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana in and for the Eastern District and there disposed of in June, 1816, in favor of the defendant. In part “In the first place it set the seal of condemnation upon the reputation of the plaintiffs, one of whom was John Kinzie, the reputed "father of Chicago" and the other, his partner and kinsman, Thomas Forsyth, not because it disclosed that they claimed to be slaveholders, for there were many such in Illinois Territory at that time, including the governor, Ninian Edwards, but that they sought to hold Nash as a slave by virtue of a forged bill of sale, void, it is true, under the law, but none the less a fraud. .... Plaintiff, who is a mulatto woman, and whom the defendant purchased as a slave, from one Vanlandingham, sues for her freedom. She alleges that she was born free; that by some means or other, Vanlandingham got possession of her when she was a child and conveyed her to Kentucky, where he held her in slavery until November, 1833, when she was carried to Shawneetown, in the State of Illinois, where she permanently resided, with the consent of her former master, until February, 1837; that she was taken to the parish of Jefferson, in this State, and sold by Vanlandingham to the defendant. She further states, that according to the laws of the State of Illinois, she was emancipated by her residence therein....”
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