From: America250NC Blog - February 3 & 16, 2026

Ned Griffin’s Battles for Freedom

Edward “Ned” Griffin (c. 1765-1802), an enslaved man from Edgecombe County, North Carolina, waged both physical battles during the Revolutionary War and legal battles to gain his freedom afterward.

Patriot calls for liberty during the Revolutionary period were at odds with slavery, but the laws of the new state worked to strengthen the system. A 1777 act of the state General Assembly prevented the emancipation of enslaved people. First, a county court had to “adjudge and allow” any request to emancipate, based on what the court perceived to be “meritorious Services,” before the state’s General Assembly would consider the plea, making the pursuit of freedom no easy task.

Ned Griffin joined the Continental Line as a soldier in 1781. His enslaver, William Griffin, had sold him to William Kitchen to take Kitchen’s place after Kitchen had deserted from his 18-month term of military service. Ned enlisted with Kitchen’s promise that if he completed the tour of duty for the 12 months remaining, Ned would be a free man.* After the war, Ned returned to Edgecombe County, but Kitchen betrayed their agreement, capturing Ned and selling him to Abner Robinson of Tarboro.

While much about Griffin’s life story remains a mystery, the 1784 petition, along with additional documents in the State Archives, answer some questions and suggest that William Griffin’s negotiation to sell Ned may have been a way to help the young man achieve freedom. Ned Griffin had grown up in William Griffin’s wife’s family. In 1770 John Gosney transferred ownership of Ned, the only enslaved person mentioned in his will, to one of his two married daughters, Oney Griffin.

In addition to Ned Griffin’s long (perhaps lifelong) connection to William and Oney Griffin, Ned’s petition itself holds a clue about William’s motivation to make the transaction with Kitchen. “Your Petitioner further saieth that at the Time no Person Could have been hired to have served in said Kitchens Behalf and was so a small sum as what I was purchased for.”

Why would William Griffin have sold Ned for such “a small sum”? A young man in good enough physical condition to serve as a soldier would have been valuable for agricultural labor on the Griffin farm. Perhaps William Griffin was in a tight financial bind and exchanging Ned for a pittance made sense, but it is also possible that William Griffin made the transaction at a financial loss to give Ned a fighting chance at freedom, knowing that court acknowledgement of “meritorious Services” was the only legal route to emancipation.

Ned enlisted as a private in the Continental Line in June or July 1781 and served for a year. Soon after he joined, his battalion, led by Captain James Mills, participated in the Battle of Eutaw Springs. On July 1, 1782, he earned a discharge for completing his term at a camp near Bacon’s Bridge in South Carolina. A few months later, he traded his pay voucher to another veteran to collect the cash for “value rec^d.” But more trouble was to come before Ned could enjoy freedom and the fruits of his labor.

Within seven months after his honorable discharge from the Continental Line, Ned Griffin had been betrayed, brutalized, and re-enslaved. In Griffin’s words, “some Time after Your Petitioners Return he was Seized upon by said Kitchen and Sold to a Certain Abner Roberson who now holds me as a Servant.”

Somehow, Griffin found help to write and submit a petition “to be released from slavery” to Edgecombe County’s Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for its February 25, 1783 convening. The court read the petition and referred it to the state General Assembly, and the next day the sheriff received a warrant to arrest Abner Robinson on Griffin’s charges of trespass, assault and battery, and false imprisonment. Robinson served time in prison until the county court met again in May or until he could post £2,000 bail, £1,000 of which was a required payment for damages—the largest fine imposed by the Edgecombe County Court that year. Records do not indicate that the county punished Kitchen for his role.

Before the state legislature considered the case the following year (April 1784), county officials collected testimony from William Griffin—Ned’s former enslaver—military officers, and other witnesses to his enlistment agreement, including the county sheriff and constable. After reviewing the petition and supporting documents, the General Assembly passed “An Act for Enfranchising Ned Griffin, Late the Property of William Kitchen,” concluding, “Ned Griffin . . . shall forever hereafter be in every respect . . . a freeman . . . and he is hereby enfranchised and forever delivered and discharged from the yoke of slavery.”

Ned settled near Griffin family members in Edgecombe County and eventually purchased land in 1801. Although the state had granted Ned land in Tennessee as a reward for his Continental Line service, it is unlikely he reaped those benefits. The agent appointed to distribute Ned Griffin’s land was involved in large-scale fraud associated with North Carolina’s Secretary of State, James Glasgow. In many cases, government officials and speculators profited from the land grants, rather than veterans and their heirs.

The 1800 census listed “Griffin, Edward (Mulatto)” as a free man of color with no other household members. If Ned had a relationship with an enslaved woman, a marriage would not have been legally recognized and any children would have shared their mother’s enslaved status. Although records do not show a family living with Ned, they do prove that he maintained at least some type of supportive relationship with the Griffin family.

At Ned’s death in 1802, Zachariah Griffin, William and Oney’s oldest son and Ned’s neighbor, was listed in Ned’s estate papers as one of four people who had lent him money. Ned’s death near the age of 40 and his lack of legal heirs meant that no one applied to the federal government for a Revolutionary War pension in his name to expand documentation of his life and military service.

Fortunately, however, the State Archives preserves his own words within his 1784 petition, as well as additional documents that help shed light on the life of a man who succeeded in fighting multiple battles for freedom.
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References

“An Act to prevent domestic Insurrections,” Acts of Assembly of the State of North Carolina (New Bern, NC: J. Davis, April 1777) p. 17

*Note: state law at the time prevented enslaved men from being substitutes. No “negro slave” may be received as a substitute. Acts of Assembly of the State of North Carolina (January 1781), p. 5. Col. James Armstrong, Ned’s enlisting officer, later testified that he never would have accepted Ned without Kitchen’s promise of freedom. Armstrong, “ever mindful of his duty and determined strictly to adhere the Laws of this state . . . objected to the said Griffin upon this Principle that he was not perfectly satisfied of his being a freeman.” Kitchen convinced Armstrong “that he had Purchased the Service of the said Griffin and upon his Serving the said tour faithfully . . . Kitchen manumitted and totally discharged him from . . . further Services whatsoever. That upon those terms and Solemn assurances of Kitchen only [Armstrong] received and enrolled [sic] him the said Griffin in the Continental service accordingly.”

Senate bill to give Ned Griffin his freedom, General Assembly Session Records, 1784 April-June, box 3, https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/may-15-senate-bill-to-give-ned-griffin-his-freedom-petition-and-messages-only/688550

“The Griffin Family,” Rocky Mount Evening Telegram, January 3, 1958, p. 4, accessed on newspaperarchive.com

Edgecombe County wills, John Gosney, 1770, CR.37.801, State Archives of N.C.

Treasurer and Comptroller military papers: Revolutionary War pay vouchers, 1779-1782, Edward Griffin, SR.204.29.50, 1782, State Archives of N.C.

Senate bill to give Ned Griffin his freedom, General Assembly Session Records, 1784 April-June, box 3, https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/may-15-senate-bill-to-give-ned-griffin-his-freedom-petition-and-messages-only/688550

Abner Robinson arrest warrant, February 26, 1783, and bail bond note, February 28, 1783, Edgecombe County Civil Action Papers, 1783 folder 1-2, CR.37.325.13

Edgecombe County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions minutes, Feb. 25, 1783, p.4, CR.37.301. Henry Hart appointed sheriff Feb. 25, 1782, p. 3; Joseph Fort appointed constable May 26, 1783, p. 11.

Senate bill to give Ned Griffin his freedom, General Assembly Session Records, 1784 April-June, box 3, https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/may-15-senate-bill-to-give-ned-griffin-his-freedom-petition-and-messages-only/688550

“An Act for Enfranchising Ned Griffin, Late the Property of William Kitchen,” Acts of Assembly of the State of North Carolina, April 1784, pp. 86-87. State Publications collection, State Library of N.C., https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/acts-of-assembly-of-the-stat….

Kemisa Kassa, “Griffin, Edward ‘Ned’,” NCpedia, https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/griffin-edward-ned
For more on the Glasgow land fraud, see Russell Koonts, “’An Angel Has Fallen:’ The Glasgow Land Frauds and the Establishment of the North Carolina Supreme Court,” MA thesis, NCSU, 1995, https://www.carolana.com/NC/eBooks/An_Angel_Has_Fallen_Russell_Koonts_1995.pdf

John Price was the agent assigned to distribute one of two Edward Griffin land grants and was eventually convicted and punished for fraudulent accounts. Revolutionary Army Accounts, Vol. III, pp. 100-108, Treasurers’ and Comptrollers’ Military Papers, State Archives of N.C.

First Census of the United States, 1790: Edgecombe County, North Carolina, Population Schedule, p. 15,

National Archives, Washington, D.C. and State Archives of N.C., accessed on ancestrylibrary.com

Second Census of the United States, 1800: Edgecombe County, North Carolina, Population Schedule, p. 24,

National Archives, Washington, D.C. and State Archives of N.C., accessed on ancestrylibrary.com.

Edgecombe County estate records, Edward Griffin, 1802. CR.37.5, State Archives of N.C.

Edgecombe County Deed Book 10, Feb. 24, 1801, p. 110. Henry and Love Anderson sold Edward Griffin more than 20 acres of land on the north side of “Falk’s Branch” to the Anderson property line. Accessed on US

Genweb Archives, http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/edgecombe/deeds/ebk10.txt
Marc Anderson, Edgecombe County map project, https://andersonnc.com/edgecombe-county-map/