This page contains notes on lawsuits between Zebulon Ward and Henrietta Wood. Further information can be found on their personal pages.

Overview of Cases

Sources

A: Federal Cases, vol. 30, p. 476–479, No. 17,965, available on HathiTrust³

B: Federal Cases, vol. 30, p. 479–483, No. 17,966, available on HathiTrust.⁴

C: Ripley Bee, March 6, 1879, link

D: “A Colored Woman Kidnapped and Taken into Slavery Wants $20,000 Damages,” Cincinnati Commercial, January 15, 1871, on AHN; Nashville Union and American, January 18, 1871, link

E: A March 14, 1873, issue of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette (AHN) reported that the case came up “yesterday on a demurrer” in U.S. Court. A March 25 report in the same paper (AHN) said that Wood vs. Ward had been placed on the docket for April 9, 1873. According to a report from September 24, 1873, in the same paper, the case was moved to the October 27, 1873, docket (and is here given a case number, 1431). Subsequent reports show it appearing on docket on January 8, 1874.

F: Case File 1431, U.S. Circuit Court, Southern District of Ohio, Cincinnati, RG 21, Civil Records, Civil Case Files (New Series), National Archives at Chicago.

G: Court Order book for Fayette County Circuit Court (volume 37, March 4, 1853-March 3, 1855), Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives.

Archival Notes

The listing above indicates the rough chronological order in which I found the corresponding source (though I believe I found B online before I found A).

I was very lucky to find F at the regional Chicago branch of the National Archives. I knew from B that the case was heard in the U.S. Circuit Court of Ohio, Southern District. But when I emailed the archivist there on August 31, 2015, to ask whether there was a record of the case, the response was initially discouraging. There was no mention of the case in “Index to Civil Cases, 1874-1882,” or “Index to Pending Cases, 1876-1911,” and the other series in RG 21 (the Court’s record group) were too complex and would require a page-by-page review.⁵

About a month later, on September 28, 2015, I visited the Chicago archives in person. I immediately found references to the case in the “Index to Appearance and Judgment Dockets” series, as well as in the “Court Order Books” for the April 1878 term of the court. Those gave me a case number, 1431. Volume 5, p. 1431, of the “Appearance and Judgment Dockets” gave a detailed timetable of the case from January 12, 1871 (when it was transferred from the Superior Court of Cincinnati) to the final “satisfaction of judgment filed; costs paid” on July 20, 1879, along with some references to volumes and page numbers of the court Journals or Order Books that I had not yet examined. I also learned from this experience how case numbers were assigned: it looks as though, for this period, the page number in the “Appearance and Judgment Dockets” volume simply became the case number, so if you have a case number for this court, you should go first to those dockets, which will then point you to all the relevant entries in the Order Books.

Finding the actual case file, with petitions, motions, and answers by the plaintiff and defendant, proved more difficult. The file was not showing up in the carton of “Civil Case Files (New Series)” where it should have been, and archivists were reporting that the carton label even skipped over 1431. Eventually, the head archivist on duty got involved and thought to look in the U.S. District Court Files (a very similar record group). He returned from the stacks with hands covered in soot and good news. Sure enough, the Wood v. Ward case was found misfiled there, just in front of the District Court case 1431!

I photographed the entire file, which also includes Wood’s original petition to the Superior Court of Cincinnati. But even this case file was not as complete as I had hoped. It did not contain any of the evidence or paperwork from the 1850s case in Kentucky. I also knew, from the abstract in the docket, that depositions were taken in the case from S. S. Scott (for the plaintiff, on April 8, 1875) and from George B. Kinkead and F. K. Hunt (for the defendant, on December 8, 1878). But the depositions were not bundled with the rest of the case file; instead, there was a note that read: “Depositions in South Closet, East Side, 2nd [sic?] Row.”

My next discovery was Source G, which came the following day at the Kentucky Department of Library and Archives. I wasn’t hopeful that I would find much there, because of an email from Walter Bowman dated August 28, 2015:

Mr. McDaniel, We have researched the Wood vs Robards case and the case appears in the Fayette County Civil Case File Index as being in file drawer 1271. However the box in which the records from file drawer 1271 were sent to the archives from Fayette County Circuit Court does not contain the case nor does it appear on the box list for that box. So it would appear the case was lost or removed in the Fayette County Circuit Court Clerks Office sometime prior to the late 1970s. We do have the original Fayette County Circuit Court Order Books as part of the KDLA collection.

Upon further inquiry while I was in Frankfort, the meaning of all this became clearer: the case does appear in an index that was made in Fayette County in the 1930s; it appears as “Henrietta Wood v. Lewis Robards etc.” under a list of 1854 (not 1853) cases, and is supposed to be in File Drawer 1271. But it apparently was not in the box containing drawer 1271 that was transferred from Fayette County to the KDLA in the 1970s, nor was it on the printed box list (which runs for hundreds of pages and lists every case in each box).

My experience the previous day in Chicago made me hopeful that perhaps the case was just in the wrong location. So I went, page by painstaking page, through the entire box list for cases between 1823 and 1888, in hopes it may have been misfiled. Completing this required a second visit several days later. I found nothing. I did pull and examine one Wood v. Ward case from 1843, but it was a different suit, as well as a Wood v MeGowan case, but it was a different Ward. Another potential one I could have looked at (but didn’t) is a Wood v. Commonwealth suit from 1854.

By my second day of looking through the box lists, however, I was also less hopeful than before that I would find it, because of a discovery made on an intervening day at the University of Kentucky Special Collections, which holds the J. Winston Coleman Collection on Slavery in Kentucky. The collection is comprised mainly of notes Coleman took in the process of writing coleman1938, and it includes his typescript list of lawsuits against Lewis Robards in the Fayette County Circuit Court. Henrietta Woods v. Lewis Robards appears on his list (with the wrong date, 1854, suggesting he too found it in the index), but it is crossed out with the annotations “Not Found” and “Contents Known.” Those suggest that the file was already missing from drawer 1271 in the 1930s, when Coleman looked for it. It is possible a different local historian or interested party took the case, or that it was bound up with the files of the Court of Appeals, which were apparently all lost in a nineteenth-century fire.⁶ But one argument against the latter possibility is the fact that Judge Baxter seemed to be familiar with the contents of the file when rendering his judgment in 1879 (Source B). Perhaps the case still exists wherever the depositions stored in the “South Closet” ended up.

Still, I did find entries related to the case at KDLA in the Court Order book for Fayette County Circuit Court (volume 37, March 4, 1853-March 3, 1855), which notes the progress of the case on pp. 75, 101, 179, 181, 193, 304, 372, 396, and 541. I found those page numbers using the index at the front of the book, which had an entry for “Wood v. Ward” on the case. In retrospect, I should have made sure there was also no reference to Wood v. Robards on that index page (or in volume 36), since the first entry on p. 75 is the substitution of Ward for Robards as the defendant.

The case does not seem to appear in any of the published reports of the appeals court.

Case-By-Case Notes

Kentucky Suit, 1853-1855

The Court Order book for Fayette County Circuit Court (volume 37, March 4, 1853-March 3, 1855) contains about ten entries (pp. 75, 101, 179, 181, 193, 304, 372, 396, and 541) concerning Wood’s suit against Zeb Ward in Kentucky. An entry at the beginning of the June Term also suggests that the Judge Pro Tem for the court at that time was Henry C. Pindell, Esq., elected because the usual judge, William C. Goodloe, had an illness in the family. Goodloe returned as the judge for the August Term.

The first entry on June 20, 1853, is the one substituting Zeb Ward for Lewis Robards as defendant, and it adds that “the same preference is given said Ward in hiring the Plaintiff, as by the order of the County Judge as was given to Boulton, Dickinson & Co.” The reference to Boulton, Dickinson & Co. could be a reference to “Bolton, Dickens & Co.,” who appear on a list of “Kentucky Slave Dealers” in the J. Winston Coleman Collection on Slavery at the University of Kentucky, Box 1, Folder 10. I looked through the order books for the Fayette County Clerk from March 1853 to June 1853, but found no reference to the case or the preference given for hiring out Wood. However, Wood recalls one of her captors during the kidnapping as a “Bolton.”

The next entry on August 4, 1853, is only a notice that the case will be continued to the next term, though Henrietta is misidentified in this entry as “Harriet” Wood.

On September 15, 1853, at a special chancery term of the court, Ward filed “certain depositions under seal.” (It is around this time that George B. Kinkead corresponds with W. S. Bodley about the testimony of Charles Mynn Thruston.)

A more interesting entry, from the same term, reads:

On motion of the Complainant and upon satisfactory proof made in open court, It is ordered that unless the Defendant changes the custody of the plaintiff within fifteen days from this order, that the sheriff take possession of her and hire her out to some one else than the plaintiff [defendant? Kinkead? or is this a reference to Robards?] until the next term of this Court, taking a covenant with good security from the hirer to pay the stipulated hire, feed and clothe her well, treat her humanely, and have her forthcoming at all events to any order or decree herein.

On February 6, 1854, Ward obtained leave to “retake Depositions generally,” and specifically to “recross interrogate Mrs. Cirode.” (Only two days before, George B. Kinkead had corresponded with Bodley again about the case.

On March 7, 1854, a brief entry noted that the case would be continued to the next term, though here again Wood is identified as “Harriett Wood.”

On June 24, 1854, the twelfth day of the June term, the court dismisses her petition and grants her an appeal. The judge presiding is William C. Goodloe.⁷

In the final entry on February 13, 1855, Ward produces a mandate from the Court of Appeals, dated January 20, 1855, affirming the judgment of the lower court.⁸

Federal Suit, 1870 to 1879

The suit was initiated in 1870 by Henrietta Wood, represented by Lincoln, Smith and Warnock and Harvey Myers.

A March 14, 1873, issue of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette (AHN) reported that the case came up “yesterday on a demurrer” in U.S. Court. A March 25 report in the same paper (AHN) said that Wood vs. Ward had been placed on the docket for April 9, 1873. According to a report from September 24, 1873, in the same paper, the case was moved to the October 27, 1873, docket (and is here given a case number, 1431). Subsequent reports show it appearing on docket on January 8, 1874. It finally came to trial in 1878.

Subheadings in sources A and B summarize the main issues in the case, from a legal standpoint. In the first case: “Slavery—Presumption of Freedom—Statute of Limitations—Absence from State—Duress—Res Judicata.” In the appeal, “Estoppel by Record—Mutuality—Judgment against Slave—Validity—Suit for Freedom—Loss of Jurisdiction.”

The initial instructions to the jury by Judge Phillip Swing in 1878 used the Ohio constitution’s presumption of freedom (an argument often advanced by abolitionists before the war) to establish Wood’s freedom after her period of residence in the state.⁹ It also held that because the cause of action began in Ohio with her kidnapping, the statute of limitations did not apply so long as “if, upon emancipation, she returned to Ohio as soon as she could, and if, during her absence, she did not reside in the same states with the defendant.” Likewise, the clock on the limitations would not begin until the defendant returned to the state either in a permanent way or in a way that would “have been brought to the knowledge of the plaintiff.” Finally, the court held that “the statute of limitations of a state does not run against one who, immediately upon coming within the state, is cast into prison, and detained there during her stay.” The Kentucky court’s judgment against Wood’s suit for freedom also “does not preclude a court of another state, in a subsequent action for damages for abduction and the value of services while held as a slave, from examining the question whether the first suit was in fact brought by the plaintiff herself, or by some other persons in her name and without her knowledge and consent.”¹⁰

As these rulings show, the central issues in the case between Wood and Ward turned on the significance of the Kentucky suit to the current action. Ward argued that the Kentucky court had already ruled in his favor that Wood was a slave, and that she had not filed suit within one year of the cause of action, so Wood’s lawyers had to demonstrate that she was presumed free by the laws of Ohio and that the statute of limitations did not constrain her.¹¹

Paradoxically, however, they also had to show that since she was, for all practical purposes, held as a slave in Kentucky, she could not have been cognizant of the lawsuit filed on her behalf, “that the petition claimed to have been filed by her was not filed by her, nor by her procurement; that she was kept in close restraint and in fear of personal injury, and had no control over, and took no part in, said proceedings.” In fact, according to Swing, this was the first major question of fact for the jury: “was this action in the state of Kentucky instituted by this woman or by her procurement, or was it simply instituted by friends who volunteered in her behalf without her knowledge or consent?”¹²

As to whether this question made a difference, Swing advised the jury that it would if she was in fact a slave at the time and had brought the suit in Fayette County. But if she could not have brought suit by herself, she was not bound by the Kentucky court’s decision, because although one state had to honor the laws of another, “the effect of the judgment between parties in another and different cause” was limited.¹³ In the Kentucky suit, Swing noted, Wood’s suit was for freedom; in the present suit, it was “for personal wrongs and injuries inflicted, as she alleges, by him upon her, to wit: The abduction and the servitude of fifteen years.]

Also interesting in this case was the description of what had been done to Wood as having “more of the elements of false imprisonment than any other,” an imprisonment by which she was “deprived of her time and labor for fifteen years, and her services for said time were worth at least $500 per year, and during all of said time was treated as a slave, with great hardship and oppression.”¹⁴

Judge Swing’s closing statement to the jury:

Gentlemen of the jury, if you find for the plaintiff you will assess such damages as you think the testimony warrants you in assessing against him. Fortunately for this country the institution of slavery has passed away, and we should not bring our particular ideas of the legality or morality of an institution of that character into court or the jury box in assessing penalties upon those who may have been connected with it. No doubt many of them regret its existence as much as any of us. But its history has been written, and it is never again to be reinstated upon this continent. While that is so, the plantiff, if she has established her case, has the right to recover from the defendant a fair compensation for the injury sustained.¹⁵

The decision made by John Baxter on motion for new trial made even sharper the question of Wood’s ability to bring suit.¹⁶ Baxter appears to have gone even farther than Swing in holding that “a slave could not sue, nor be sued, while slavery existed in the slave states” and therefore, by the principle of mutuality, was “not answerable civilly” or “hindered by estoppel.” True, “Suits for freedom were entertained in the slave states, but upon the idea that the party suing was free.”¹⁷

Baxter noted that “Defendant’s exceptions upon the trial were numerous,” and that “we have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss in detail all the exceptions that were taken.” The only one that he deemed relevant was the question: “Is the plaintiff, by reason of the decree rendered in her suit, by the Fayette county circuit court of Kentucky, precluded from a re-examination in this court of the same question decided in that case?” His framing of the question arguably made the implications of the case wider, since they turned on whether “the decree rendered by the court of Kentucky and here pleaded and relied on as a bar to this action forever preclude[d] the plaintiff from a re-examination of the issue decided in that case.”¹⁸

In deciding on that question, Baxter entered into a long discussion of slaves’ inability to bring suit or have “civil rights.” He gave numerous citations of cases showing that they did not under the laws of Kentucky and other slave states. And in view of this, “it would be an anomaly to hold that any one could be concluded by a judgment or decree rendered in a judicial proceeding which he had no legal capacity to prosecute or defend.”¹⁹ In other words, Baxter argued not only that Wood did not bring suit in Kentucky, but that she could not. The dismissal of Wood’s petition by the Kentucky court, he argued, showed that this was the case.

Baxter concluded:

To permit such a decree, obtained under such circumstances, against a human being, for the time treated as a chattel, and without legal capacity to sue, to operate as a bar, or an estoppel, and conclude the plaintiff in a matter of such vital importance as is involved in this case, would be a just reproach to the jurisprudence of any country.

Baxter also noted that Ward had said nothing since to contest plaintiff’s argument that she was in fact free.

Full text of Baxter’s judgment in the appeal is available on AHN in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette, February 17, 1879. On the same day, the paper appended the comment: “The damages awarded the twice emancipated colored woman seem trivial in comparison to the amount of suffering she underwent. It is pleasant to reflect that such days will come again no more to her or any of her race.”

On December 15, 1879, the Cincinnati Daily Gazette reported that Wood’s lawyer in her case against Ward, A. G. Collins, won his case against Henrietta Wood. The jury awarded Collins $400 for “for legal services rendered.”²⁰

Timeline of Federal Suit

Drawing on the Appearance and Judgment Docket in Chicago:

Chicago National Archives

In the Journals (or Court Order Books) for RG 21 at Chicago, the following entries appear, along with others that I have photographed but not transcribed:

Daniel H. Mears cosigner with Zeb Ward of security in the amount of $1,000 promised to Henrietta Wood when Ward requests that the case be moved to the Circuit Court.

Among the deponents for the case were George B. Kinkead and former Lexington mayor and lawyer Francis Key Hunt on behalf of the defendant, and S. S. Scott (potentially a doctor from Florence, Kentucky; potentially Samuel S. Scott; potentially a filibusterer and Confederate sympathizer) on behalf of the plaintiff.

Volume S

Monday, April 15, 1878, p. 231, Henrietta Wood vs. Zeb. Ward, Case 1431:

This day came the parties by their attorneys and thereupon to try the issue came a jury, to wit: George Cox, D. D. Conover, Samuel Crumbaugh, Joseph C. Glenn, John Hawthorn, Isaac Light, David A. Mitchell, Thompson Leave [or Heave?], J. Scott Peebles, Alfred Pedrick, L. D. Reed and Samuel White, who were duly empaneled and sworn well and truly to try the issue joined between the parties, and the evidence not being finished, the Court adjourned the jury until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, to which time this case is continued.

Tuesday, April 16, 1878, p. 232, Henrietta Wood vs. Zeb. Ward, Case 1431:

This day again came the parties by their attorneys and also the jurors heretofore empaneled and sworn herein, and the evidence being finished but counsel not having concluded their argument the Court adjourned the jury until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, to which time this case is continued.

Wednesday, April 17, 1878, p. 233, Henrietta Wood vs. Zeb. Ward, Case 1431:

Verdict. This day again came the parties by their attorneys and also the jurors heretofore empaneled and sworn herein who upon their oaths find the issue to be in favor of the plaintiff, and asses [sic] the damages of the plantiff by reason of the premises at Twenty five hundred dollars. And thereupon the defendant by his attorney gives notice of a motion for a new trial.

Saturday, June 29, 1878, p. 334, Henrietta Wood vs. Zeb Ward, Case 1431, p. 334:

Damages. Bill exceptions allowed. Now comes the defendant by his attorneys and presents his certain Bill of Exceptions to the finding and rulings of the Court which is allowed by the Court, signed, sealed and ordered to be made a part of the record of this case.

Saturday, February 15, 1879, p. 527, Henrietta Wood v. Zeb Ward, Case 1431:

Damages. This day this cause came to be heard upon the motion of the defendant for a new trial and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof the Court overrule said motion. It is by the Court therefore considered that the plaintiff recover of the said Zeb Ward the sum of Twenty five hundred dollars with interest thereon from April 17th, 1878, and her costs herein expended taxed at $ [blank space in manuscript] and execution is awarded therefor.