James Garrard -

March 5, 1804. Document Signed <i>“J Garrard”</i> <b>as 2nd Governor of Kentucky</b>, four pages, 8” x 13”. Bourbon County [Kentucky], March 5, 1804. On laid paper. Witnessed by <i>“Laban Shipp.”</i> Strengthened at mid horizontal folds. Fine condition.<br /><br />Sworn statement by Gov. Garrard answering <i>“a Bill of Complaint”</i> against him by Philemon Thomas relating to a bond he executed to John Tanner <i>“for the conveyance of 130 or 140 Acres of land being part of a Preemption of 1000 Acres granted by the Commonwealth of Virginia”</i> to him <i>“as assignee of William Holiday.”</i> Garrard claims that he <i>“was induced to make said sale by the false representations that were made to this Deft. </i>[Garrard]<i> by the aforesaid Tanner, that the said Tanner had at the Date aforesaid acquired an interest in a Military Survey on the Ohio river in the name of John David Woolper for which interfered with this Defendants Preemption aforesaid and as this Defendant held the eldest legal title … the Deft informed him that he did not mean to disprove of his claim provided Woolpers Military Survey left within his claim as much as 250 Acres as it would make an agreeable little plantation…”</i><br /><br />Baptist preacher John Taylor in his “Baptists on the American Frontier” (1820s) wrote about the above situation. In part, “Taylor and Tanner around 1790 had bought from James Garrard part of a thousand acres adjacent to the Woolper grant. Known as the preemption of William Holliday, this land had been surveyed for him in 1785 … In 1785 Holliday assigned part of his interest in this acreage to Garrard; later the balance went to Philemon Thomas. Tanner and Taylor knew that the Holliday land was overlapped by the prior claim of John David Woolper…”<br />