Trial of Hark Moore (slave of Joseph Travis estate)

September 3, 1831 - Executed

At a Court of Oyer and Terminer summoned and held for the County of Southampton on the 3rd day of September 1831 for the trial of Hark a negro man the slave property of Joseph Travis’s Est. Moses a boy the property of Joseph Travis’s Est. Davy the property of Levi Waller & Nathan the property of Jacob Williams charged with insurrection.

Present: Carr Bowers, William B. Goodwyne, Robert Goodwyne, James Trezevant, and Ores A. Browne, Gent.

The Court being thus constituted Meriwether B. Broadnax Attorney prosecuting for the Commonwealth filed an information against the said Hark, Moses, Davy and Nelson. Whereupon the said Hark was set to the bar in custody of the jailor of this County and the Court doth assign William C. Parker Esq. counsel for the prisoner in his defense and the prisoner being arraigned of the premises pleaded not guilty to the information, and

Levi Waller was sworn as a witness for the Commonwealth and says that he saw the prisoner Hark in the yard with a number of insurgent negroes on Monday 22d August 1831 with a gun in his hands that the prisoner acted as one of the company of the insurgents—he heard the rest of the insurgents call the/prisoner Captain Moore./

Thomas Ridley a witness for the Commonwealth being sworn says that he saw the prisoner after he was arrested at Dr. Blunts in this county on the day after the morning on which the attack was made by the insurgents at Dr. Blunts—that the prisoner admitted that he was in the company that went to Dr. Blunts found a pocketbook in the possession of the prisoner which he believed to have been Trajan Doyle’s—the prisoner had powder and shot and some silver in his pockets.

The Court after hearing the testimony and all the circumstances of the case was unanimously of the opinion that the prisoner is guilty in manner and form as in the information against him is set forth and it being demanded of him if anything for himself he had or knew to say why the Court should not proceed to pronounce judgment against him according to law and nothing being offered or alleged in delay of judgment it is considered by the Court that the prisoner Hark be taken hence to the place from whence he came where he is to be securely confined until Friday the ninth day of September Inst. on which day between the hours of ten o’clock in the forenoon and two o’clock in the afternoon he is to be taken by the Sheriff to the usual place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until he be dead. And the Court values the said slave to four hundred and fifty dollars.