Strangely Absent from Carson vs. Smith, 1852-1857 By Bob Zybach uring the mid-1850s in Oregon Territory, a former Kentucky slave woman filed two suits against a wealthy white landowner in a Benton County court and won both times. The most remarkable — and politically interesting — thing about these events is that nobody noticed. Newspaper reporters didn’t report on these unlikely occurrences, and historians have never given them more than a sentence or two — and then almost invariably with mis- spelled names. The woman filing the legal actions was an illiterate former slave woman and 1845 Oregon Trail pioneer named Letitia Carson. The person she sued was named Greenberry Smith, for whom the small community just south of Corvallis is named and who had mysteriously served as executor to the estate of David Carson — who had died in September 1852, leaving property behind in Benton County and in Missouri. Carson also left be- hind his self-proclaimed widow, Letitia, and their two children, 8-year-old Martha and 4-year-old Adam. In 1852, slavery was still legal in the southern United States, but not in its territories, including Oregon Territory. Oregon be- came a state in 1859, and the Civil War did not begin until 1860. In each politically related instance, the central issue was slavery and whether it should be legal or not and, if legal, how the le- gal rights of owners and slaves might vary in the different states and territories. In March 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, declared: “A free negro of the African race, whose an- cestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States… Consequently … they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States.” 24 OREGON STATE BAR BULLETIN • OCTOBER 2016 Letitia Carson filed her first suit against Greenberry Smith on Feb. 27, 1854, three years before the infamous Dred Scott deci- sion — which most historians agree was one of the worst deci- sions ever made by the Supreme Court — but much public and political sentiment at that time in both the North and South ran strongly in favor of that eventual determination, and few slaves or former slaves were allowed to file legal actions against whites in many courts throughout the states and territories. However, thanks to an apparently accidental quirk in Oregon law (which had previously held that it was not only illegal for Carson to file a legal action in an Oregon court, it was also illegal for her and her children to even live in Oregon), Carson was al- lowed to go forward with her action and to follow that up with additional filings. Which she won. This is her story. Who Was Letitia Carson? Letitia Carson was likely born sometime from 1814 to 1818 as a slave in Kentucky. Nothing is known of her early life or how she got to Missouri at some point before 1845. Very possibly she was involved in the hemp or tobacco farming industries, whether as a field hand or house servant or both. She was probably a Baptist or a Methodist and attended Sunday services in her owner’s church or with an all-black congregation — possibly some of each. In May 1845, Letitia began a six-month journey across the Oregon Trail with Irishman David Carson, a 45-year-old Platte Background Image: Oct. 20, 1856, judgment for $1,200, plus expenses, written by Judge George H. Williams, chief justice of Oregon Territory, on behalf of “Lutisha” Carson vs. Greenberry (G.B.) Smith, administrator of the estate of David Carson.