Files of Judge William Armistead Moore, receiver of so much of the estate of James P. Whedbee of Perquimans County, N.C., as had been bequeathed to his slaves in 1852, including petition re will of James P. Whedbee (1867); correspondence (1867-1882); notes owing to Whedbee estate, fees on actions, taxes, etc.; lists of Whedbee slaves/freedmen, legatees (1854-1874); affidavits of identity of Whedbee freedmen (1868-1879); powers of attorney given by Whedbee freedmen (1867-1877); freedmen's receipts for distributive shares of Whedbee's estate; and deeds and land records of the Whedbee estate. Whedbee died at the end of 1852 leaving an estate worth in excess of $200,000.00 and left a class bequest of ²/--ths of his property to his slaves, who were to be manumitted upon Whedbee's wife's death, outfitted for carrying on an agricultural life, and transported to Liberia. Whedbee provided that if his wife remarried she was to take the same share of the property as if he had died intestate. Lavinia Whedbee dissented from the will and remarried, consequently removing certain of the slaves from the class to be manumitted. Because of these complications, Whedbee's executor failed to carrey into effect the provisions of the will concerning the slaves to be freed before the outbreak of the Civil War which halted efforts on the slaves' behalf. The effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was to restore to freedom those who had been re-enslaved and handed over to Mrs. Whedbee (then Mrs. Abram Riddick). Whedbee's heirs-at-law brought action in 1866 to prevent execution of those provisions of the will touching the slave beneficiaries, but the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that there had been no lapse in that part of the will, that the slaves handed over to the widow were to share equally with those whose status in the manumitted class had remained unchanged, and ordered a decree for equal distribution among the original slaves and their heirs according to those principles. Judge Moore, as receiver, employed his sons, Augustus Minton Moore and John A. Moore, to track down the original slaves and their heirs so that their shares could be paid them. It appears from these papers that the original slaves had numbered 104, and that 104 equal shares of the residue of the estate, after Civil War losses and post-war depression, came to $70.00 per share.
