Harkey v. Powell
| Decision Date | 30 June 1820 |
| Citation | 8 N.C. 17 |
| Parties | HARKEY, Administrator of Russ, v. POWELL. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
(IN EQUITY.)
A mortgage of a slave was made in 1789 to secure a debt due in March, 1793, and the mortgagee took possession at the date of the deed and continued it until 1815 without any account or acknowledgment. Held, that the mortgagor could not redeem; such a lapse of time creates the presumption that the right of redemption has been abandoned.
THIS was a bill filed in August, 1815, from Mecklenburg Court of Equity, for the redemption of a negro slave, Grace, and her issue, and was transferred from the Court of Equity for Mecklenburg to this Court for trial.
The bill charged that complainant's intestate borrowed from Powell, the defendant, the sum of eighty pounds in the year 1800, and for the purpose of securing the payment of it executed a bill of sale to Powell for the said slave, subject to a proviso of redemption on payment of the said sum; that defendant took possession of the slave at the time of making the deed, and had continued it ever since; that she had issue, several children, who were also in his possession; that Russ in his lifetime paid forty pounds, part of the mortgage money; that he then died intestate; that complainant had obtained letters of administration of his estate, and had offered to pay the residue of the said mortgage money and interest, but at the same time alleged that it had been already satisfied out of the hire and profits of the slaves. Complainant then prayed an account and that he might be let in to redeem.
The defendant admitted in his answer that he lent Russ eighty pounds, but it was on 21 March, 1789, and that he then took a
bill of sale from Russ conveying to him the slave Grace, with a condition that if the money should be repaid on or before 1 March, 1793, the deed should be void; that eighty pounds was the full value of Grace when he took her in 1789. He denied that Russ or the complainant had ever paid oroffered to pay the eighty pounds, or any part thereof, or had requested him to give up the negroes or to come to an account. He stated that Grace had issue, six children, which he had raised and then held as his own.
The answer then insisted that the defendant had been in the peaceable possession of the slaves for more than twenty years after 1 March, 1793, before suit brought, and that as he gave a fair price this Court would not aid complainant. With his answer the defendant exhibited the deed, which bore...
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