Zephemiah Liles frees his slave Ralph

This was found in an old Ouachita Parish newspaper called “The Ouachitta Standard”. The issue was dated April 5, 1839. In this ad, Zephemiah announced that he was intending to emancipate his slave Ralph. If there were objections, it would be stopped. According to Dr. Williams’ book “Founding Families of the Ouachita Valley”, there were none and Ralph was freed. He would have had to leave the state though, unless he got special permission to stay from the state, like Richard Barrington did.

Notice how there were two notices, one in English and one in French!