I’ve been working on the murder of a slave in Bedford County, Virginia, in the 1810/1811 time frame off and on for some time. Newspaper accounts only indicate the last name of the man involved and I’m working on determining exactly who he is. We’ve mentioned the case before, but it’s been on my genealogical back burner for a while.

A little searching on GoogleBooks for some of the key terms located a reference to the incident in Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and the Atlantic World by Andrew T. Fede. How much it actually mentions the case I’m looking into remains to be seen, but I’m hoping it will give me some insight into the legal issues that I’m certain to encounter when (or if) the actual records are located.

Never hurts to look at GoogleBooks (http://books.google.com) for your search terms as well–especially when it’s been a few years when it was last done. This relatively new item was not located the last time searches were conducted.