Manuscript legal document, signed by Tuttle Moorland, Joseph Wood, Jr., and Robert Moorland. Pulaski County, Georgia, 20 August 1818. 4 pages, folio, 7 1/8 x 11 3/4 in.

A unique document concerning the sale and bond of “a Mulatto fellow named Joe” in Pulaski County, Georgia, in 1818, who was in fact a freed man originally from Spain.

Tuttle H. Moorland (1790–1829) requests $400 from Theophilus Williams for the “Bill of Sale for the Title of a Mulatto fellow named Joe (which said fellow has since been liberated + set at liberty by a Division of the Honorable the Superior Court in...the County of Twiggs as a free Citizen of Spain) in the sum of four hundred dollars.”

Following the initial petition, the document records a bond of $800 for Tuttle and his brother Robert Moorland (b. 1783), along with an order “to any lawful officer” to attach the goods, chattels, and lands of Theophilus Williams to compel him to appear before the court.

A remarkable and revealing glimpse into the legal ambiguities surrounding freedom, race, and identity in the early American South.