Partus sequitur ventrem

Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine in which the English royal colonies incorporated in legislation related to definitions of slavery. It held that the slave status of a child followed that of his or her mother. Prior to the adoption of the doctrine, English common law had held that among English subjects, a child's status was inherited from its father.

After successful lawsuits like Elizabeth Grinstead’s, the colonies wanted a way to insure African slaves would be bonded for life. At the time, most bonded women were African and fathers were legal required to acknowledge and support their children.

The doctrine legitimized the rape of slave women by white men. Their illegitimate mixed-race children were confined to slave quarters unless fathers took specific legal actions on their behalf. This meant that white fathers were no longer required to legally acknowledge, support, or emancipate their illegitimate children by slave women. Men could sell their children or put them to work. This lead to numerous slaves of mixed-race, some with primarily European ancestry.

Elizabeth Key Grinstead

Born in Warwick County, Virginia in 1630, Elizabeth Key was the illegitimate daughter of an enslaved black mother and a white English planter father, Thomas Key, who was also a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Before moving back to England in 1636, Thomas Key arranged for Elizabeth’s godfather, Humphrey Higginson, to have possession of her for nine years. The agreement stipulated that Higginson would be Elizabeth’s guardian, that she would be treated like a member of his family, and that she be given her freedom at the age of fifteen. Thomas Key died later that year and Higginson sold Elizabeth to Colonel John Mottram. She was required to serve another nine years before she would be freed.

Elizabeth remained with Colonel Mottram until 1650 when he brought over a group of white indentured servants from England, including a young lawyer named William Grinstead. Under the English law of primogeniture, only the eldest son could inherit the father’s real property, so many younger sons crossed the Atlantic to seek their lives in the American colonies. During this time, William and Elizabeth fell in love and had a son together, John. They were prohibited from marrying while Grinstead was serving his indenture.

After Mottram’s death in 1655, Elizabeth Key sued for her freedom after the executors of her late master’s estate classified her and her infant son as Negroes and part of the property assets of the estate rather than as an indentured servant with a free-born child. By that time, she had already served as an indentured servant for nineteen years.

Her lawsuit was one of the earliest freedom suits in the American colonies filed by a person of African ancestry. With William acting as her lawyer, Elizabeth asked the court to free her based on an English law that stated that if a child’s father was a free man, then the child should be free. The court gave Elizabeth her freedom but the decision was later overturned by a higher court that ruled that she was a slave. She then appealed to Virginia’s General Assembly.

This excerpt is from the General Assembly’s report:

It appears to us that she is the daughter of Thomas Key by several Evidences… That she hath been by verdict of a Jury impaneled 20th January 1655 in the County of Northumberland found to be free by several oaths which the Jury desired might be Recorded. That by the Common Law the Child of a Woman slave begot by a freeman ought to be free. That she hath been long since Christened… That Thomas Key sold her only for nine Years to Higginson with several conditions to use her more Respectfully than a Common servant or slave… For these Reasons we conceive the said Elizabeth ought to be free and that her last Master should give her Corn and Clothes and give her satisfaction for the time she hath served longer than She ought to have done.

The committee sent the case back to the courts to be retried, and Elizabeth finally won her freedom in 1656. After winning the case, Elizabeth and William were married, and they had another son together, William II. William Grinstead died early in 1661. The widow Elizabeth Grinstead later remarried, to the widower John Parse. Upon his death, she and her sons John and William Grinstead II inherited 500 acres, helping to secure their future.

In 1662, Virginia reacted to lawsuits like Grinstead’s by passing a law to clarify the status of the children of women of African descent. This statute, the “Partus sequitur ventrem”, imposed lifetime hereditary bondage on Africans, and stated that a child would be “bond or free according to the condition of the mother,” rather than the father, as was the case in England.

2 Posts on the Way

Yesterday was a little crazy and I missed my post. Instead of forcing two people out and not doing either one real justice, I'm going to introduce one person and a provide a little extra information that came as a result of this person. So 2 posts today but they are slightly different than usual.

John Punch

John Punch was a servant of Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn, a wealthy landowner, a justice, and a member of the House of Burgesses, representing Charles River County. In 1640, Punch ran away to Maryland with two of Gwyn's European indentured servants. All three were caught and returned to Virginia. On July 9th, the Virginia Governor's Council, which served as the colony's highest court, sentenced both Europeans to have their terms of indenture extended by another four years each. However, the Council sentenced Punch to serve for the remainder of his life. In addition, the council sentenced the three men to thirty lashes each.

This court decision played an important significance in the establishment of a legal acceptance for slavery. This case is the first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery and the first legal distinction between Europeans and Africans made in the colonies. This made it a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States. For this reason, John Punch is considered the first official slave in the English colonies.

In July 2012, Ancestry.com published a paper suggesting that John Punch was a twelfth-generation grandfather of President Barack Obama on his mother's side, on the basis of historic and genealogical research and Y-DNA analysis. Punch's descendants were known by the Bunch or Bunche surname. Punch is believed to be one of the paternal ancestors of Ralph Bunche, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Emily Perez

Emily Perez was born in Heidelberg, West Germany on February 19, 1983 to African American and Hispanic parents. Perez graduated high school in 2001 in the top 10 of her class. After graduation, she enrolled in the United States Military at West Point. There she became the highest-ranking African-American female cadet in the history of West Point serving as Corps Commander Sergeant Major. While at West Point, Perez ran track, outrunning most of the men, and directed a gospel choir. Following graduation in 2005, she was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Army.

Lieutenant Perez was deployed to Iraq in December 2005 as a Medical Service Corps officer. Shortly before shipping out to Iraq, she flew cross-country to be a bone marrow donor for a stranger. During her time in Iraq, Perez headed a weekly convoy as it rolled down treacherous roads, filled with bombs and bullets, near Najaf, Iraq. In September 2006, she was leading a platoon during combat operations south of Baghdad when a makeshift bomb exploded near her Humvee.

During her time in the military, Lieutenant Emily Perez was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, and the Combat Action Badge. After her death, she was awarded the NCAA Award of Valor. Lieutenant Perez has a grave placed in West Point Cemetery.