Biography
Dinah was probably born into slavery around the year 1753. Details of her life are only known through an unfortunate Vermont Supreme Court case that revolved around the Vermont Constitution's ban on adult slavery.
In 1783 Stephen Jacob, an attorney from Windsor, Vermont, purchased Dinah from Jotham White of Charlestown, New Hampshire. Jacobs brought her to Windsor to work in his household. She stayed in the Jacobs home until 1800 when she started to lose her eyesight and suffered from other health issues. Unable to care for herself, she was expelled from the house to be cared for by the overseer of the poor for Windsor.
The town select board, operating as the overseers of the poor, balked at taking care of Dinah, insisting that Stephen Jacob care for her as she was enslaved and not a citizen of the town. The argument reached a point where a case was brought before the Vermont Supreme Court in 1802.
By this point Stephen Jacob served as one of the three Vermont Supreme Court justices. He recused himself from the proceedings, leaving the decision to Judge Jonathan Robinson and Judge Royall Tyler.
The town argued that Jacob purchased Dinah and enslaved her in his home for almost twenty years. As a slave, she would not be afforded the public charity benefits (support of the poor) offered citizens of Windsor. The town tried to enter into evidence the signed bill-of-sale between Jacobs and White from 1783.
Jacob argued that she was not a slave, but a servant, and that in 1800 she started taking jobs from other people so was not beholden to him for responsibility or care. His lawyers also argued to disallow the bill-of-sale from evidence since Vermont banned adult slavery in its Constitution and the bill-of-sale would have no legal standing in Vermont.
Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled in Jacob's favor, stating that since Vermont banned adult slavery, Dinah stopped being enslaved as soon as she came to Vermont. This decision ran counter to Vermont's fugitive slave act of 1793 that stated people enslaved outside Vermont remained enslaved, even if they crossed into Vermont and must be returned to their owners.
The legal gymnastics of this case did not change the lived experience of Dinah as an enslaved person in a state that purportedly outlawed slavery.
The town of Windsor tried unsuccessfully to expel her from town on a couple of occasions, but must have eventually had a change of heart as the overseers paid someone to "attend to Judge Jacob's Dinah in her last sickness." The town paid for her burial in the local cemetery.