“STATE OF TENNESSEE, Shelby County:

Lucy Bennett makes oath: I know William M. Smith, and knew him at Brownsville before the war.  I lived two blocks from him : and I then knew Ben Groves.  He was then a slave of William M. Smith, who afterwards traded Ben off to Jack Ware, a negro trader.  Judge Smith was the worst kind of a slavery man then.  He did not allow other slaves to come to his plantation to see his slaves; neither did he give his slaves enough to eat and he used to’ whip them right bad.’  He was mean to his slaves.  I know Thomas G. Smith, the judge’s brother.

Judge William M. Smith owned the following slaves that I know of: George, Betsey and two children, Clarissa, Lydia, Martha, Rachael and some six or seven children.  He sold Lydia.

her

LUCY + BENNETT

mark.

Subscribed and sworn before me, April 16, 1879.

R.S. CAPERS

Deputy Clerk”

Reference Data:

Index to the Miscellanious Documents of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the 41st Congress, 1869-70, by US Government, 1870, page 151