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1847–1849 and the suits after
The county's one fully documented freedom case is the Powell case, and its ground is the county seat's, not this township's. As Indiana University South Bend's African American Landmark Tour states the record: David and Lucy Powell and their four children escaped their Kentucky enslaver, John Norris, on the night of 9 October 1847, and made their way through Indiana to a new home at Cassopolis, Michigan; in September 1849 Norris came north with eight others to seize them, and the fight that followed played out at the St. Joseph County courthouse in South Bend — the case, its writs and the penalty suits against the rescuers (the Norris litigation) carried whole in South Bend's build, where they belong. The Powells' road to Cassopolis ran north through this county, and a road north from Kentucky through South Bend toward Michigan crosses country east of Liberty Township on any plausible line; no carrier reached places the family, their pursuers or their rescuers in North Liberty. The case therefore prints here at boundary size — named, dated, owned elsewhere, and not claimed.