Charlotte Dupuy

Charlotte Dupuy, also called Lottie (c.1787-1790—c. 1866, was an enslaved African-American woman who filed a freedom suit in 1829 against her master, Henry Clay, then Secretary of state. This case went to court seventeen years before Dred Scott filed his more famous legal challenge to slavery. Then living in Washington, D.C., Dupuy sued for her freedom and that of her two children, based on a promise by her previous owner. This was an example of the many freedom suits filed by slaves in the decades before the American Civil War.

Although the Circuit Court's ruling in 1830 went against Dupuy, she had worked for wages for 18 months and lived in the household of Martin Van Buren, the succeeding Secretary of State, while it was decided. Clay had returned to his home in Kentucky in 1829. After the ruling, Clay had Dupuy transported to the home of his daughter and son-in-law in New Orleans, and she remained enslaved for another decade. Finally in 1840, Henry Clay freed Dupuy and her daughter Mary Ann. Four years later he freed her son Charles Dupuy. By 1860 her husband Aaron Dupuy was listed on the census as a free man living with her at Ashland.

Charlotte Dupuy was born into slavery in Cambridge, Maryland. She was brought to Kentucky in 1805 by the tailor James Condon, who had purchased her as a child from Daniel Parker in Cambridge. She was said to have been born about 1787. About 1806 she met and married Aaron Dupuy, a young man held by Henry Clay on his Ashland plantation in Lexington, Kentucky. Condon sold Charlotte to Henry Clay in May 1806, perhaps to allow the young couple to live together. Charlotte and Aaron had two children, Charles and Mary Ann Dupuy.

When Clay went to Washington, D.C., for his congressional term beginning in 1810, Charlotte, her husband Aaron and two children accompanied him or arrived to work for him soon after. They lived with Clay and served in the house he rented, originally built for Stephen Decatur. Located at Lafayette Square across from the White House, today the Decatur House is a museum and a designated National Historic Landmark.

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