Elizabeth Key Grinstead

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (also Greenstead; c. 1630 or 1632 – 1665) was one of the first mixed race people in the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son, John Grinstead, on July 21, 1656, in the Colony of Virginia. Key based her suit on two connected arguments: her father's status as a free English man and her status as an indentured servant. Key's father was an Englishman who had acknowledged her and baptized her as a Christian in the American branch of the Church of England. He was a wealthy planter who had tried to protect her by establishing a guardianship for her when she was young, before his death. This guardianship outlined that her father gave Key away on an indenture which was supposed to end when she turned 15, but this agreement had expired well before the time of the suit. Based on these factors, her attorney and common-law husband, William Grinstead, argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit was one of the earliest "freedom suits" by an African-descended person in the English colonies. In response to Key's suit and other challenges, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law in 1662 establishing that the social status of children born in the colony ("bond" or "free") would follow the social status of their respective mothers. This law differed from English common law, in which children's social status was determined by their fathers, who had an obligation to support both legitimate and illegitimate children. Virginia and other colonies incorporated a principle known as partus sequitur ventrem or partus, relating to chattel property. The legislation hardened the boundaries of slavery by ensuring that all children born to enslaved women, regardless of paternity or proportion of...