Description
"A Grandson's Grip - Murder of Mrs. Sarah H. Dorris" - - (excerpted from longer article) - - "The Dorris Family.” Gen. George P. Dorris, during the early years of ’50 (1850), was a resident of Platte City, Missouri. He was a member of the General Assembly and a man of considerable local prominence. Said a prominent citizen who has known the Dorris family for the past 30 years: “Dorris always was a gambler. Before the war he was a nigger-trader and many is the time I have seen him in the market, buying and selling slaves. His wife was a shrewd business woman and the pair between them invented a novel scheme for making money out of the dealings in human flesh. Negro women with infants at the breast were sold at a very low price, because nobody wanted the trouble of having the children about. Dorris bought such women whenever he could get what he considered a bargain. He would turn the mother and child over to his wife, who would take the child from the breast and rear it by the bottle. The woman was then ready to be sold again at a profit. Whatever Mrs. Dorris could realize from the sale of the child she was entitled, by her bargain with her husband, to keep for pin-money. The old lady made quite a large amount of money in this way, and she kept the most of it, too.Date(s) of Creation
1/30/1882