Excerpt from The Last Will and Testament of John McDonogh, Late of Macdonoghville, State of Louisiana: Also, His Memoranda of Instructions to His Executors, Relative to the Management of His Estate
Henry Carpenters by trade, the black men Houma, David Crock st, and George Calhoun, the mulattoe, or grill, boy Jerry, and the black women Sophie, Dolly, Hagar, and Anna, or Hannah, and their Children, with any other black, or colored people, whom I may acquire by purchase subsequent to this, my last Will, and Testament, shall serve those, (by being hired out for wages, or kept employed on my plantations, if thereon, so em ployed, at my death, ) to whom I have herein after willed the rest, residue and remainder of my Estate, real, and personal, fifteen years from and after my death when then, after said service of fifteen years, my Executors (hereinafter named) will deliver said black and colored people, up to the Ame rican Colonization Society for Colonizing the Free people of Color, of the Ijnited States, established at the City of Washington, in the District of Columbia, to be also sent to Liberia, on the Coast of Africa.) And to pay a proportionate part of the Charter of said Vessel for transporting them to Africa, furnishing them with pro visions, stores, medicines rice, rice for the Voyage - I also direct my Executors (hereinafter named) to lay out and expend for the use of those, my people, who are to go immediately after my death, to Liberia, the sum of Cue thousand dollars in such Articles as ploughs, hoes, Spades, axes, nails, common locks, hinges, clothing, garden and other seeds &0. Doc. And to divide out those articles among them in equal proportions, and see them put on board the vessel at the time of sailing.-my Executors will also he pleased to give letters of recommendation, to those my peo ple, directed to the inhabitants of that Colony, setting forth their good characters, and the morality of their lives, as a passport to their good Opinions, and to purchase and place in the hands of each of said individuals, old and young, at the moment of sailing for Africa, the volume of the Holy Gospel of the Cid and New Tes tament, as the most precious of all the gifts we have it in our power to give or they to receive - And for the more general difi’usion of Knowledge, and consequent well being of Mankind, convinced as I am that T can make no disposition of those Worldly goods which the most High has been pleased so bountifully to place under my Stewardship, that will be so pleasing to him, as that by means of which the poor will be instructed in Wisdom and led into the path.
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