Petition of Fortune Burnee to the Massachusetts General Court
To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court Assembled at Boston October the1 1787
The humble petition of Fortune Burnee, a Negro man of Grafton in the County of Worcester, humbly sheweth that he holds by courtesy of the estate of his late wife, Abigail,2 daughter of Ami Printer, one of the original proprietors of the Hassanamisco Indians, that the said Abigail's natural heirs are supposed to be all dead,3 that by the providence of God, his dwelling house in said Grafton was entirely consumed by fire and all his household goods, that he is left destitute of almost all the necessaries of life, is destitute of a house to secure him from the clemency of the weather, that he is almost ninety years of age and under the extraordinary decays of nature, that there is about sixteen acres and one hundred pole of land set off to Fortune Burnee, Jr., son of the said Abigail, in the Indian Hundred Acres of land, so-called, that the said Fortune Burnee, Jr., has not been heard of within near ten years within any of the United States and is supposed to be dead,4 and your petitioner prays that the said sixteen acres and one hundred and twenty poles of land may be sold and the proceeds of the sale be laid out in rebuilding a house where the former house was burnt which stood on land set off to the said Fortune Burnee, Jr., to be for the use and improvement of the petitioner during his life and after his decease to be to the use of the said Fortune Burnee, Jr., if he ever returns, and to be under5 such instructions and restrictions as to Your Honours shall seem meet.
As your humble petitioners in duty bound shall ever pray,
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Certification: |
We, the subscribers, Guardians to the Grafton Indians, do hereby certify that the facts set fourth in the above petition are true and that it is necessary the above petition should be granted for the reasons above mentioned. Edward Rawson, Willis Hall |
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Endorsement: |
Resolve on the Petition of Fortune Burnee Authorizing the Guardians of the Grafton Indians to sell the Land mentioned /November 19, 1787 / 1 Copy for Colonel Luke Drury / Petition of Fortune Burnee, Negro man of Grafton / Report / Deacon Tucker / Mr. Hubbard / Mr. Newell 6 |
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Docketing: |
88 |
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Cataloguing: |
059 |
- 1. The day is omitted in the original manuscript.
- 2. Abigail Printer Abraham Anthony Burnee died in 1776.
- 3. Abigail’s son Joseph Anthony, from her union with William Anthony, died in 1777. It is not known when the children born to her union with Andrew Abraham, Jr. (Jonas, b. 1742, David, b. 1744, John, b. 1747) died, if they were indeed dead by this time. Grafton, Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850, 9.
- 4. The younger Burnee was assumed lost at sea. It is unclear, however, who the Fortune Burnee that married Phylis, a negro servant of Rev. Frost of Mendon, on July 31, 1778 in Grafton was or the one who wed Sarah Hector, a Hassanamisco woman, in Grafton on November 8, 1781. Grafton Vital Records to 1850, 178.
- 5. Deleted Text: the care of the Guardians
- 6. Resolves 1787, c. 88, passed November 19, 1787