Elizabeth Key Grinstead facts for kids

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630 – January 20, 1665) was one of the first Black people in the American colonies to bravely sue for her freedom from slavery. She won her case on July 21, 1656, in the colony of Virginia, which also meant her young son, John Grinstead, became free.

Elizabeth's case was special because her father was an English planter who had recognized her as his daughter. He had also made sure she was baptized as a Christian in the Church of England. Before he died, her father, who was wealthy, even tried to protect her by arranging for someone to look after her. Her lawyer and partner, William Grinstead, used these facts to argue successfully that she should be free. This lawsuit was one of the very first "freedom suits" by a person of African descent in the English colonies.

Because of Elizabeth Key's case and similar challenges, the Virginia House of Burgesses (the colony's government) passed a new law in 1662. This law stated that the status of children born in the colony (whether they were enslaved or free) would follow the status of their mother. This was different from English common law, where a child's status usually followed their father. Virginia's new law, called partus sequitur ventrem, made slavery much stricter. It meant that all children born to enslaved women would be born into slavery, no matter who their father was or how much European ancestry they had, unless they were specifically freed.

Who Was Elizabeth Key?

Elizabeth Key, sometimes spelled Kaye, was born in 1630 in Warwick County, Virginia. Her mother was an enslaved African woman. Her father was Thomas Key, a wealthy English planter and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses for Warwick County (which is now Newport News).

Thomas Key's legal wife lived across the James River in Isle of Wight County, Virginia. The Key family were considered "pioneer planters" because they had come to Virginia before 1616, stayed for more than three years, paid for their own travel, and survived the Indian massacre of 1622.

Around 1636, Thomas Key was brought to court because he was believed to be Elizabeth's father. At first, he denied it, saying an unknown "Turk" was the father. However, witnesses told the court that he was indeed Elizabeth's father. Thomas Key then accepted responsibility for Elizabeth. He arranged for her baptism in the Church of England and helped support her financially.

Before he died in 1636, Thomas placed Elizabeth, who was then six years old, with a wealthy planter named Humphrey Higginson. This was an indenture agreement for nine years. Higginson was supposed to be her guardian until Elizabeth turned 15. At that age, girls were often considered old enough to marry or start working for wages, and Elizabeth was supposed to become free.

During this early time in Virginia, both African and European servants often worked for a set number of years to pay for their travel to America. Children born outside of marriage were also often indentured until they were old enough to support themselves. Many indentured servants eventually gained their freedom. People of different backgrounds often lived and worked together as equals, and some even married.

Thomas Key wanted Higginson to take Elizabeth with him if he returned to England. But Higginson did not keep this promise. Instead, he transferred (or sold) Elizabeth's indenture to Colonel John Mottrom. Around 1640, Mottram moved to a new area called Northumberland County, taking 10-year-old Elizabeth with him as a servant. We don't know much about Elizabeth's life for the next 15 years.

Her Fight for Freedom

Around 1650, Colonel Mottram paid for 20 young white English indentured servants to come to his plantation called Coan Hall. The colony gave landowners 50 acres (200,000 m²) of land for each person they brought to Virginia. These indentured servants would work for six years to pay for their journey from England.

One of these servants was 16-year-old William Grinstead, a young lawyer. He was the ancestor of many families with the last name Grinstead today. William likely learned law because he was a younger son of an attorney. In England, only the oldest son usually inherited land, so many younger sons came to the American colonies to make their own way.

Mottram recognized William Grinstead's skills and used him to handle legal matters for his plantation. During this time, William Grinstead and Elizabeth Key started a relationship. They had a son together, whom they named John Grinstead. They were not allowed to marry while William was still an indentured servant. Elizabeth Key's future was uncertain.

The 1655 Freedom Lawsuit

After Mottram died in 1655, the people managing his estate decided that Elizabeth Key and her baby son, John, were "Negroes." This meant they were considered enslaved and part of Mottram's property.

With William Grinstead acting as her lawyer, Elizabeth Key sued the estate to gain her freedom. She argued that she was an indentured servant who had served longer than her agreed time. She also argued that her son should be free because she was free. Elizabeth was 25 years old and had been a servant for 19 years, including 15 years with Mottram.

In the early 1600s, it was not always clear how a person's status was decided in the colonies. Children born to English parents outside of England were considered English subjects. But what about children with only one English parent? People of mixed race who wanted freedom often had to show their English family connections.

Elizabeth had worked as a servant for ten years longer than her indenture agreement stated. To decide if Elizabeth's father was a free Englishman, the court listened to witnesses who knew the people involved.

One witness, Nicholas Jurnew, said in 1655 that he had heard a rumor that Elizabeth was the child of Mr. Kaye (Thomas Key). However, he also said that Mr. Kaye had claimed a "Turk" was Elizabeth's father. This testimony was important because colonists did not give "Turks" the same rights as themselves, as they were not Christian.

The strongest evidence about Elizabeth's father came from Elizabeth Newman, an 80-year-old former servant of Mottram. She testified that it was well-known in Virginia that Elizabeth, a mixed-race person, was the daughter of Mr. Kaye. She added that Mr. Kaye had been fined by the court for having a child with his enslaved woman, and that child was Elizabeth. Other witnesses gave similar accounts.

Based on this evidence, the court believed that Thomas Key was Elizabeth's father. Following English common law, the court first granted Elizabeth Key her freedom. However, Mottram's estate appealed this decision to a higher court, the General Court. This court overturned the ruling and said Elizabeth was enslaved because her mother was enslaved.

Elizabeth Key, through William Grinstead, then took her case to the Virginia General Assembly. The Assembly sent the case back to the courts for a new trial. Elizabeth Key finally won her freedom for herself and her son on three main points:

• Most importantly, under English common law, a child's status followed the father's. Since her father was a free Englishman, she should be free.
• She was a practicing Christian. In other cases, courts had ruled that Black or Native American Christians could not be held in slavery for life.
• The Assembly may also have been influenced by Thomas Key's good reputation as a planter and wanted to respect his wishes for his daughter. Also, the father of her mixed-race son was an English subject.

The court ordered Mottram's estate to give Elizabeth Key corn and clothes as payment for the years she had been wrongly held as a servant.

Even though Elizabeth Key won her freedom, she and William Grinstead could not marry until he finished his indenture in 1656. Their marriage was one of the few recorded in the 1600s between an Englishman and a free woman of African descent. They had another son together before William Grinstead died in early 1661.

Later, Elizabeth Grinstead remarried a widower named John Parse (Pearce). When he died, she and her sons, John and William Grinstead II, inherited 500 acres (2.0 km²) of land. This helped secure their future and allowed them to succeed. Many people in the South today with the last names Grinstead, Greenstead, Grinsted, and Grimsted are believed to be descendants of Elizabeth (Key) and William Grinstead.

How Elizabeth Key Changed Laws

Because of Elizabeth Key's freedom suit and similar cases, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a new law in December 1662. This law was meant to clear up "doubts" about whether children born to an Englishman and an enslaved Black woman should be enslaved or free.

The new law stated that children born in the colony would take the status of their mother, whether she was enslaved or free. This rule was called partus sequitur ventrum. This was a big change from English common law, where a child's status and support usually came from their father.

Some historians believe this law was mainly passed because the colony needed more workers. It allowed slave owners to claim the children of enslaved women as their own property and laborers. It also meant that white fathers of mixed-race children were no longer required to recognize them, provide financial support, or arrange for their training, as they would have had to do in England. While some white fathers did help their mixed-race children, many others did not.

Other European colonies and later American states passed similar laws. These laws made sure that all children born to enslaved mothers were also enslaved. If these children had free white fathers, those fathers had to take special legal steps to free their children. Later, in the 1800s, it became even harder to free enslaved people in the South.

After the American Revolutionary War, the new United States Constitution counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for deciding how many representatives each state would have in Congress. This was a compromise between Southern states, who wanted more power by counting enslaved people fully, and Northern states, who worried about Southern power. Northern states generally ended slavery in the early 1800s. Slavery continued in the Southern states until the Thirteenth Amendment ended it across the United States in 1865.

See also

• American slave court cases
• Charlotte Dupuy
• Polly Berry
• Lucy Delaney
• List of slaves