A printed chattel mortgage, the kind of short loan paper common in eastern North Carolina farm country around 1900. E. F. Smith pledged a pair of oxen and a log cart to secure a debt of $30.50 owed to John R. Bryan.
Chattel mortgage from E. F. Smith to John R. Bryan on a yoke of oxen and a cart – Craven County, 1901
Transcription notes: spelling, capitalization and punctuation follow the original. Words in [square brackets] are editorial notes; [?] marks an uncertain reading and [illegible] marks words that could not be read.
[Printed form: CHATTEL MORTGAGE. – N. S. Richardson & Son, Printers, New Bern, N. C. Handwritten entries are given as written.]
I E. F. Smith of the County of Craven in the State of North Carolina, am indebted to John R. Bryan of Craven County, in said State, in the sum of thirty 50/100 Dollars, for which he hold my note, to be due on the 1st day of Feby, A. D. 1902, and to secure the payment of the same, I do hereby convey to him these articles of Personal Property, to-wit:
one yoke of oxen, both red & white, – one raised by Saml Wayne [?] & in his mark, the other in my mark – crop & slit the right, & crop & under square the left year [ear]. One log cart. all of said property is free from incumbrance,
BUT ON THIS SPECIAL TRUST, That if I fail to pay said debt and interest on or before the 1st day of Feby, A. D. 1902, then he may sell said property, or so much thereof as may be necessary, by Public Auction for Cash, first giving twenty days notice at three public places, and apply the proceeds of such sale to the discharge of said debt and interest on the same, and pay any surplus to me.
Given under my hand and seal, this 27 day of July A. D. 1901.
Witness: Chas. Fornes, his X mark
E. F. Smith (Seal.)
[Back:]
CHATTEL MORTGAGE.
E. F. Smith TO Jns. [Jno.] R. Bryan
[The registration and probate blanks on the back are not filled in.]
About the original
The oxen are described by their earmarks: one carried the mark of the man who raised it, read here as “Saml Wayne” (the surname is not certain), and the other carried Smith’s own mark, a crop and slit in the right ear and a crop and under-square in the left. “Year” is the writer’s spelling of “ear.”
The witness, Charles Fornes, signed by his mark. The registration blanks on the back were never filled in, so this copy may not have been recorded.
How this paper came into the Roach family’s keeping is not stated on it.
Source: Chattel mortgage from E. F. Smith to John R. Bryan on a yoke of oxen and a cart. Roach Family Papers (#346), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, Box 1, Folder d (Legal Records, 1784–1901). Collection guide. Digitized folder: ECU Digital Collections, 0346-b1-fd.
Images courtesy of East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University. View in ECU Digital Collections: 35874.
Also from this folder: Swift Creek residents hire Turner Nelson as teacher of “Reading writing and Arithmetic” in 1823.
Part of the Roach Family Papers collection on East Carolina Roots.
