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Manuscript Legal Document Signed by Sion W. Boon as Circuit Court Clerk, and W.D. Maxey on behalf of 12 plaintiffs of the Maxey family.   Madison County, Tennessee. Dec. 5, 1860. 1 pg.+ docketing note on verso.

An affidavit alleging that James S. Hill “wrongfully and without authority…seized and detained" Jim, a 20 year-old slave “of coper colour…worth about” $1500. The plaintiffs apparently claimed rightful ownership, their legal costs justified by the considerable estimated value of a healthy young male slave, just four months before the outbreak of Civil War, 

In the coming war, Boon and Maxey would be among the lucky survivors of Confederate Tennessee Infantry Regiments decimated in battles at Shiloh and Chickamauga. Defendant Hill, a mill owner, served in the Confederate Cavalry, and he too survived the War. The fate of the valuable Jim is, of course, unknown.