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The Black Laws & the Underground Railroad — Lakeville
The Huggart Settlement's whole course stands in the black-history file (LK-2). What that file's anchor did not carry is the regime the settlement lived under — the bond law Samuel Huggart bought land beneath in 1834, the constitutional article that told his sons no more of their people could come, the register that does not survive — and the traffic claims that touch this ground, each tested and given its verdict. this section carries both, at the strengths their carriers give.
The 1831 Bond Law — the Frame Samuel Huggart Bought Under
1816 – 1851 · registration, a $500 bond, and hiring-out
Indiana prohibited slavery in 1816; it did not confer civil equality. The first constitution's frame barred Black suffrage, Black militia service, Black testimony against a white person in court, and — by an 1843 statute — Black…
Article XIII (1851) — Text, Statewide Vote, and the County Count That Does Not Survive
1851 – 1852 · the exclusion article and its register
"No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution." Article XIII of Indiana's 1851 Constitution (§1), carried whole: contracts with any person coming in violation of §1 are void…
Colonization — the Offer, the Machinery, and the County's Answer
1829 – 1863 · $5,000, forty-seven emigrations, "total failure"
Article XIII's fines were written to pay for removal; the removal never came. The Indiana Colonization Society was organised at Indianapolis in 1829 as an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. By act of 28 April 1852…
The Disabilities at Settlement Size, and the Repeal Course Whole
1851 – 1893 · upheld 1856, invalidated 1866, removed 1881
A settlement man could buy land, pay tax, and be fined under Article XIII; he could not vote on any of it. The 1851 Constitution confined suffrage to white males and said so outright (Art. II, §5: "No Negro or Mulatto shall have…
The County's Documented Case — Powell
1847 – 1856 · South Bend's record; this township's thread is one defendant
The Powell case is documented — and it is South Bend's record. David and Lucy Powell and their four sons fled Kentucky in October 1847 and settled near Cassopolis, Michigan; at midnight on 27 September 1849 their claimant seized…
Claim 1 — Palmer's Olive Branch Sawmill: Documented Purchase, Claimed Rescue
Bought 28 January 1861 · the claim is Dakin's, 1899
What is documented is the mill, the abolitionist, and the lawsuit; the fugitives at the mill are one man's late telling. Solomon W. Palmer came to South Bend in the early 1840s already an abolitionist — in New York he had…
Claims 2–4 — the Settlement, the Churches, the Road: Verdicts
Tested one by one, per the checklist
Claim 2 — the Huggart Settlement as waystation: no evidence, refused by its own carrier. The tradition runs that a free Black settlement a mile from the county's most documented abolitionist's mill must have sheltered fugitives.…
Seized again in the courtroom: the Powell case after the first discharge
1849 · the course the pointer did not carry
The banked fragment ends at Judge Egbert's discharge; the case did not. The discharge itself stands as banked: Elisha Egbert, acting as commissioner, found no certificate of removal under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793…
The nine defendants, named whole — and the abolitionist press of the county
1850 · Norris v. Newton et al. · the press layer
The banked fragment names Solomon W. Palmer alone; the federal suit had nine defendants. When Norris sued in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Indiana, the defendants he named were: Edwin B. Crocker, Leander B.…
The penalty suit and the Supreme Court: Norris v. Crocker, 1851
1850–1851 · the course around the judgment
There were two federal suits, and the second one ended the first one's law. Norris v. Newton et al. , Case No. 10,307, 18 F. Cas. 322 (5 McLean 92), Circuit Court, District of Indiana, May Term 1850, Justice John McLean presiding…