| Summary: | Action of detinue for a slave, Dick. In 1796, Joseph Herring gave his daughter, Nancy, his slave Olive. Nancy Herring subsequently married Henry Williams; Williams was in fact already married, his wife having run away from him shortly after the wedding. Henry and Nancy Williams took possession of Olive, who went on to have a son, Dick. Nancy Williams died intestate in 1818; her son Enoch Williams, the present defendant, claimed the administration of her estate and that of Joseph Herring and took Dick from the possession of Henry Williams. Henry, however, managed to sell Dick for [dollars] 600 to the plaintiff, James Gathings, and deliver him before Enoch Williams retook him. Gathings claimed Dick as having been sold to him by Henry Williams, who had title in right of his wife Nancy, and Enoch Williams claimed as administrator of Nancy Williams and Joseph Herring. There was a verdict for the plaintiff, from which the defendant appealed. The Supreme Court determined that the defendant's acquiescence in the long public acceptance of the validity of his parents' marriage estopped him from claiming that his father had no title in Dick on the grounds that he had not been married to his mother; and that the long possession of Dick by Henry Williams, challenged neither by Nancy nor by anyone else, vested title in him, and so - as he had sold Dick on - in the plaintiff. judgment affirmed.
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