This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: JanSlater Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.pennsylvania.counties.greene/11145.1.1.1.2/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Mozzmer writes "Do you know where we could find a copy of the petition. I would like to see who signed it too." I don't know if the petition still exists. It would be found either at the County level (good luck with that search since many of the County records seem to be kept in the basement of the Jackson Building out of sight of public eyes by some officials who refuse to make copies of them, although they are still public information regardless of their age or content) or possibly at the State level. The subject is in found and often quoted from: Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830 By CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D. originally published in 1925 "A reaction against this custom thereafter set in during the first decade of the nineteenth century, when fugitives in the rough were rushing to that State, and culminated in an actual campaign against it by 1820. That year a petition from Greene County said that many Negroes had settled in Pennsylvania and had been able to seduce into marriage "the minor children of the white inhabitants." 30 This county, therefore, asked that these marriages be made an offence against the laws of the State. Such a marriage was the cause of a riot in Columbia in 1834 and in 1838 the members of the Constitutional Convention engaged in a heated discussion of the custom.31 Petitions were frequently sent to the legislature asking that this admixture be penalized by law, but no such action was ever taken." 30 Journal of Senate, 1820-1821, p. 213; and American Daily Advertiser, January 23, 1821. 31 Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1838, X, p. 230. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.