1p, 8 x 12 1/4 in. (creasing, separation at center fold, light soil). Docketed on verso.

Complaint brought to the Circuit Court of Amite County by Elizabeth Browne and William H. Dillingham asserting that Hardin D. Moore and Robert Stewart had promised to pay $55 "for the hire of the negro girl Ellen...and to furnish said girl with three suits of clothes one pair of shoes one blanket and pay her tax for the year," but despite multiple requests for payment the defendants have "wholly refused" to comply with the agreement.

Though born and educated in Maine and Massachusetts, by 1825 William H. Dillingham (1798-1857) had removed to Amite County, Mississippi, where he served as an administrator/attorney dealing with the estates of the deceased, including enslavers. The 1830 U.S. Federal Census does not indicate that Dillingham enslaved any persons, but by 1850 the U.S. Slave Schedule indicates he enslaved a fifty-year-old man and a fifty year-old woman. The hiring out of the "negro girl Ellen" exemplifies a system of contracting enslaved labor, which at times proved more profitable to enslavers than having an enslaved person working on his/her own property.