Roger Brooke Taney to Clotworthy Birnie Transcribed by Carter Edwards Transcribed on Primary Source Cooperative 2025

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Available under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA Attribution--NonCommercial--ShareAlike. The Papers of Roger Brooke Taney Ed Bradley, David Ramsey 20 Jul 1814 taney-roger-brooke birnie-clotworthy Roger Brooke Taney to Clotworthy Birnie Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania Taney MSS, I-BonisteelR-1954-3

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 Private Practice Maryland Judiciary
Frederick July 20th 1814 Dr Sir

The witnesses in your cases against Gildea & Cover1 are I presume summoned The Summons’s issued a long time ago – The cases will come on early in the court – You had best be here on Tuesday in the first week by 12 oclock –

Respectfully / yr. obedt. St. R. B. Taney

Autograph Letter Signed

Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Taney MSS, I-BonisteelR-1954-3

Mr. Clotworthy Birnie / near / Taney Town

Fred: Town md 20 July

Frederick 20th July 1814 / R B Tany

In late 1811 Birnie’s indentured servant Betty ran away and found shelter at the nearby home of a Mr. and Mrs. Cowers (not Cover). Birnie’s attempt to seize Betty led to a physical altercation with the Cowerses and another couple, the Gildeas. Birney retreated and filed suit the following summer. Max Grivno, Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790 - 1860 (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 58.
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