The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
ROW #648 · BRANCH ITEM 1 · THE COUNTY'S CASE, FROM THE COURT RECORD
This county has exactly one fugitive case documented at court strength, and it is told whole before anything is claimed for Penn: David and Lucy Powell and their four sons — Lewis, Samuel, George and James — escaped on the night of 9 October 1847 from John Norris of Boone County, Kentucky, crossed the Ohio, and settled in Cass County, Michigan, among free Black families, Quakers and other freedom-seekers, where they bought land. On the night of 27 September 1849 Norris, with eight armed men, broke into the Powell house about eight miles from Cassopolis, seized Lucy and three of the boys (David and Samuel were away), tied Lewis's arms, and started south in a covered wagon, passing through South Bend early on 28 September and stopping one to two miles south of the village to take refreshments. Wright Modlin — the Powells' Cass County neighbour; the spelling Modlin is used here, and the “Maudlin” form in some retellings is the same man, not a second one — rode for help. Attorney Edwin B. Crocker petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus; Judge Elisha Egbert, of the St. Joseph County probate court, issued it; and a deputy — carried as Russell Day in one account and, in the federal court's own narrative, the sheriff with Crocker and others riding up to a company that grew to one hundred and forty or more, some armed, others with bricks, stones or clubs — served it where the party had stopped. Norris consented to return with the family to South Bend. Both tellings of who rode up print; the writ, the stop south of the village, and the return do not conflict.
In the courtroom Norris could not produce the certificate the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 required, and Judge Egbert ordered the Powells discharged. Norris and his men brandished weapons in the courtroom itself and seized at the family; warrants then issued against members of Norris's party for riot and breach of the peace (one was fined), and civil process issued against Norris in the fugitives' own names for the arrest. Over the following days hundreds of the Powells' Cass County neighbours and friends came into South Bend, many armed, and the court again ordered the family freed; Norris left without them. Crocker, who had stood for the Powells, published the case himself: The South Bend Fugitive Slave Case, involving the right to a writ of habeas corpus (1851) — the pamphlet is the case's own contemporary record, and this article follows it and the federal report, not later retellings, wherever they differ in detail.
The Penn test, stated separately and printed at its strength: no party to the case — not a Powell, not Norris or his men, not Crocker, Egbert, Modlin, or any of the nine men later sued (named in the next article) — is seated in Penn Township or Osceola in any source reached, and no seizure, rescue, writ or hearing on Penn ground is documented. The case crossed this county and was heard at its seat; it did not happen here. Row #648 therefore closes for Penn as a TESTED NEGATIVE inside a DUG county whole: the case the checklist asks for exists, at full court strength, one township ring away, and printing it as an Osceola case would be the exact inflation this branch forbids.
Sources:
- Edwin B. Crocker, The South Bend Fugitive Slave Case (1851), as held in the Michiana Memory collection, St. Joseph County Public Library.
- Norris v. Newton et al., Case No. 10,307, 5 McLean 92 (Circuit Court, District of Indiana, May Term 1850) — the court's own narrative of the seizure, the stop south of South Bend, and the hearing.
- Banked fragments searched for a Penn seat: Before Osceola; Population; Famous Stories & the Record — no Penn party or Penn-ground incident in any of them.