Save this girl from a state of slavery.

by Lisa Y. Henderson

Notice: The attention of the public is requested in the following statement.  On the evening of Saturday the 19th instant, the house of the subscriber, on Swift Creek, was entered during her absence, by John Bryan, and a free mulattoe girl named Dicey Moore, the daughter of Lydia Moore, was forcibly taken and carried away in a chair by the said Bryan.  It is believed that he has a forged bill of sale for the girl, purporting to have been executed by her mother, and it is feared that he has carried the girl to the south, with the intention of selling her.  Dicey Moore has lived with the subscriber ever since she was fifteen months old, and the fact of her freedom can be proved beyond the possibility of a doubt.  She is now about seventeen years old, five feet high, with a yellowish complexion, black bushy hair, and wears rings in her ears.  Bryan is about six feet high, has blue eyes, is a little round shouldered, and has a long nose.  The editors of southern papers are requested to give the foregoing as insertions in their respective papers, as possibly it may save from a state of slavery this girl, who has unquestionable right to her freedom.  Catherine Free, Swift Creek, Craven County, February 25, 1820.

Hillsborough Recorder,  5 April 1820.

Dicey Moore married George Carter on 12 July 1833 in Craven County. In the 1850 census of Craven County: George Carter, 63, laborer, wife Decy, 45, and daughters Margaret, 15, Ann, 13, Hannah, 10, and Betsy, 8.  [One can only hope that this is Dicey, above, happily ever after. — LYH]

In the 1840 census of Newbern, Craven County, Lydia Moore appears as the head of a household of two free colored women, both over age 55.