Elizabeth Key
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth Date: 1630 - Warwick Co., Virginia Christening: Death: Bef 1667 - (Northumberland Co., Virginia) Burial: Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Thomas Key ( -Abt 1636) Mother:
Spouses and Children
1. *William Grinstead (Abt 1632 - Abt 1662) Marriage: 21 Jul 1656 - Northumberland Co., Virginia 1 Children: 1. William Grinstead (Bef 1656-Abt 1696) 2. John Grinstead (Bef 1656-Abt 1697) 3. Elizabeth Grinstead (Bef 1660-Between 1660/1667) 2. John Parse ( - Abt 1667) Marriage: Children: 1. Elizabeth Parse ( - )
Notes
General:
The following is a minor modification of the Wikipedia article entitled "Elizabeth Key Grinstead":
Elizabeth Key Grinstead (b. 1630 - d. c. after 1665) was the first woman of African ancestry in the North American colonies who sued for her freedom from slavery and won. Grinstead won her freedom and that of their two young sons John and William on July 21, 1656. She sued based on the fact that her father was of white English ancestry and that she was a baptized Christian. Based on these two factors, she argued successfully against being enslaved for life. Grinstead's lawsuit in 1655 was one of the earliest freedom suits filed by a person with African ancestry in the English colonies.
Partly in response to Key's suit, in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law mandating that the status of children born in the colony would follow the status of the mother, "bond or free", rather than the father, as had been the precedent in English Common Law. This was the principle of partus sequitur ventrum. This legislation hardened the boundaries of slavery and ensured that mixed-race children fathered by planters and overseers would be kept as slaves unless explicitly freed. It freed the fathers from responsibility of acknowledging the children as theirs, supporting them, arranging for apprenticeships, or emancipating them.
Elizabeth Key was born in 1630 in Warwick County, Virginia (an extinct county on the north side of the mouth of the James River; now Newport News) to a black slave mother and Thomas Key, a planter and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Key represented Denbigh in Warwick County, but his wife lived across the James River in Isle of Wight County , where she owned considerable property. The Keys were English-born and were considered to be "ancient planters" because they had come to Virginia before 1616. They had remained for more than three years, paid their own passage, and survived the Indian massacre of 1622.
In a civil case in about 1636, Thomas Key was charged with fathering the slave Elizabeth, which he at first tried to deny. He blamed an unidentified "Turk". The question of paternity was an issue years later when Elizabeth needed to prove in court that her father was a free man. Once paternity was established, Key did not try to duck his duty again. He arranged for the baptism of Elizabeth in the Church of England. She was referred to as "Black Besse" in various legal documents of the period. Sometime before his death in 1636, Key put Elizabeth in the custody of her godfather, Humphrey Higginson. Higginson was required to care for her as his own child and set her free (from indenture) in nine years when she was 15 years old.
During this period in early Virginia, both African and European servants were likely to be indentured for a period of years, often in payment of passage to the Americas, or to work off an apprenticeship training period. It was common for them to earn their freedom. They lived, worked, ate, played together as true equals.
In Elizabeth's case, Key did not intend for the girl to be kept as a slave, but for Higginson to be her guardian and for her to serve as an indentured servant until she was of age. It is not clear what happened, but Higginson did not keep his promise. He was obligated not only to care for Elizabeth, but to take her with him if he were to return to England. When he returned to England, he left Elizabeth Key in the ownership of a Col. John Mottram, Northumberland County's first settler. Elizabeth, at age 10 in about 1640, was one of the first non-native settlers in the wilderness of Northumberland County. Her future changed dramatically as Mottram took her 90 miles away from her birthplace to be a servant. She may have never seen her mother again. She was without an indenture contract and, conceivably, could be a slave forever.
While there is no record of her next 15 years, events beginning in 1650 would change Elizabeth's life forever and lead her to become a figure in American history. That year, Mottram brought a group of 20 men, white indentured servants from England, to Coan Hall, his plantation in Northumberland County. For every sponsored servant, a Virginian would receive a headright of 50 acres of land. Each indentured person would serve for six years to pay for passage.
Among Mottram's new indentures was 16-year-old William Grinstead, a young lawyer. Although Grinstead's parents are not known, it is likely that he was a younger son of an attorney and learned his father's trade. Under English common law of primogeniture, only the eldest son could inherit the father's property. Many younger sons sought their fortunes in the colonies across the Atlantic.
Mottram soon recognized Grinstead's value and had him represent him in legal matters. It was at Coan Hall that Grinstead met Elizabeth Key. They fell in love and had two sons, John and William, but indentured servants could not marry. Elizabeth's future was uncertain without freedom. When Mottram died in 1655, Grinstead went to work. Grinstead sued the Mottram estate for Elizabeth Key's freedom. At age 25, she had been a servant for 19 years \emdash - 15 for Mottram, far beyond the usual bounds of indenture. One of the basic issues the Court needed to settle was whether Elizabeth Key's father was a free man, as she claimed. Testimony depended on what neighbors knew.
Nicholas Jurnew, 53, a man who knew the family, testified in 1655 that he had "heard a flying report at Yorke that Elizabeth a Negro Servant to the Estate of Col. John Mottrom (deceased) was the Childe of Mr. Kaye but ... Mr. Kaye said that a Turke of Capt. Mathewes was Father to the Girle."
Elizabeth Newman, 80, testified that "it was a common Fame in Virginia that Elizabeth a Molletto, now (e) servant to the Estate of Col. John Mottrom, deceased, was the Daughter of Mr. Kaye; and the said Kaye was brought to Blunt-Point Court and there fined for getting his Negro woman with Childe, which said Negroe was the Mother of the said Molletto, and the said fine was for getting the Negro with Childe which Childe was the said Elizabeth."
The court documents can be dramatic reading. "The deposition of Alice Larrett aged 38 yeares or thereabouts Sworne and Examined Sayth that Elizabeth ...twenty five yeares of age or thereabouts and that I saw her mother goe to bed to her Master many times and that I heard her mother Say that shee was Mr. Keyes daughter."
The Court accepted the argument for Thomas Key's paternity and granted Elizabeth Key her freedom. Mottram's estate appealed the decision to a higher court, which overturned the lower court and ruled that Elizabeth was a slave.
Grinstead took the case to the Virginia General Assembly, which appointed a committee to investigate. They decided to send the case back to the courts for retrial. Elizabeth Key finally won her freedom on three counts, including that by English common law, the status of the father determined the status of the child. Elizabeth Key's father was free, she had been baptized as a Christian, and she had served as an indentured servant past her "coming of age" - becoming an adult. Primarily it was Key's father's status that gained her freedom. The court ordered Mottram's estate to compensate Key with corn and clothes for her lost years.
A certificate stating the intention of William Grinstead and Elixabeth Key to marry was published in open court July 21, 1656, the same month in which she won her freedom. Presumably they married soon thereafter. William died an early death in about 1662.
Elizabeth later remarried the widower John Parse, who died in 1667. Since she is not mentioned in the will she presumably died before he did. Their sons inherited 500 acres. As a consequence of the Elizabeth Key freedom suit (and similar challenges), in December 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a colonial law that required Negro women's children to serve according to the condition of the mother, known as partus sequitur ventrum. The statute was a dramatic departure from the English tradition in which a child received his or her social status from his or her father. This law set into motion the enslavement of all children born to slave mothers in the United States for another 204 years. Only in 1865 did the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolish slavery.
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For a detailed analysis of the legal issues involved in Elizabeth Key's freedom suit see the following article by Taunya Lovell Banks, Professor of Equality Jurisprudence, University of Maryland School of Law, and published in the Akron Law Review:
http://www.uakron.edu/law/lawreview/v41/docs/Banks_final08.pdf
"The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia" is an article by Warren M. Billings in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 30, 3 (1973), pgs 467-74. The extant court documents relative to the Elizabeth Key case have been reprinted in The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth-Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689 by the same author.
See also
jonesandrelated.blogspot.com/2012/02/elizabeth-key-grinstead.html
1
Ruth & Sam Sparacio (The Antient Press, 1993), Repository: Clayton Library, Houston, Texas.
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