At the marriage of his daughter Gatsey to Lovick Harris, Smith Delamar gave her two slaves, Bridget and her child Sitty, for the extent of Gatsey's life, with a remainder after her death to any children she might have with Harris. She and her husband subsequently had four children. The plaintiff's bill charged that a short time before his death in 1842, Smith Delamar became angry with the Harrises and succeeded in extracting the bill of sale for the slaves from Gatsey Harris and destroying it. After Delamar's death and the death of Gatsey, Delamar's executors took the slaves from Lovick Harris. Harris then filed suit against the executors, William and Stephen Delamar, as the next friend of his infant children, for the return of the slaves and the conveyance of a deed to replace the one destroyed by their testator. The defendants answered that Delamar took the deed back from Gatsey because, contrary to his wishes, it left the slaves in remainder only to Gatsey's children by Lovick Harris and not to any children she might have by him or any subsequent husbands, and that it had been surrendered to him voluntarily. The Supreme Court ruled that the deed destroyed by Delamar had been imposed on him by fraud of his son-in-law, Harris, who had been requested to frame it in a way in which he had not but had presented it to Delamar as if he had followed the instructions Delamar had given him; and that the fact that Delamar's will anyway left the slaves in question to his grandchildren, the plaintiffs, rendered their bill essentially pointless. Bill dismissed with costs.
