A Slave Manumitted by Robert Pleasants

This numbered certificate ("No. 16") confirms that a formerly enslaved man named James registered with the Henrico County court as a free Black on September 7, 1797. James is described as being about thirty-two years old and about five-feet nine-inches tall. Robert Pleasants, James's former enslaver, had manumitted, or freed him, and that act had been "duly recorded in the County Court." 

In 1793 and 1803, the General Assembly passed acts that required all free Blacks and mixed-race people be registered in books kept by the clerks of the county courts.