Elizabeth Key was born in 1630 in Warwick County, Virginia. Warwick County was on the James River, between Hampton Roads and the recently-failed Jamestown Colony. By 1634, the Virginia Colony had about 5,000 people across eight counties, or shires. Anyhow, Elizabeth Key was born to an indentured servant mother whose name has been lost to history, and Thomas Key. Thomas Key was a planter and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses - the first democratically elected legislative body in the colonies.
Key represented Warwick County, which is now Newport News. Across the James River lived Thomas Key's wife, who owned a considerable amount of property in Isle of Wight County. The Keys were considered "Pioneer Planters," meaning that they were born in England and came to North America on the Virginia Colony of London's dime.
The Virginia Colony of London was one of the first joint-stock companies in the British Empire, and came on the heels of the disastrous Roanoke experiment, which cost a fortune in terms of both lives and money. It controlled an area of British North America on the Atlantic coast from the 34th Parallel to the 41st Parallel - or from Cape Fear, NC to Long Island Sound. It was a big grant. However, they did share an area between the 38th and 41st Parallels with the Plymouth Company, and each party promised not to build a colony within 100 miles
As it was a joint-stock company, the plan was to establish a financially successful colony and divide the profits among shareholders. Unfortunately, the early Virginia Colony wasn't terribly profitable. And by that I mean it wasn't profitable at all. Since there weren't any profits to share, anyone who stayed in the Virginia Colony for three years was given a grant of land, depending on when you arrived. This is where the Keys come in, having arrived in Virginia by 1616.
The Keys had paid their own way from England to Virginia, indicating not an inconsiderate amount of wealth. They had also managed to survive the Indian Massacre of 1622, in which Opechancanough led an attack on the encroaching English "settlers" who were expanding beyond what the indigenous tribes felt was reasonable due to the wear and tear on Virginia farmland from the cultivation of tobacco. This attack killed about 350 settlers - or about a quarter of the British population of Virginia. But the British didn't leave, and neither did the Keys.
Things went sideways in 1636, the same year as the founding of Harvard University. At Blunt Point, Virginia (near the present-day James River Country Club) there was a civic case involving the possibility of Key illegitimately fathering a girl between the ages of 4 and 6.
Key did what men have been doing on a timeline from Thomas Jefferson to Jerry Springer: he denied it outright. And why, exactly, was this case going to court? Because there were so many bastard kids running around, court was the logical place to get sorted out who was financially responsible for who/m. An unknown "Turk" was the father, Key pleaded to the court. Witness testimony was enough to convince the court that Key was, in fact, the father of Elizabeth.
This meant that Key (and any other white man who fathered an illegitimate child - regardless of their race) was responsible for Elizabeth. Thomas Key had Elizabeth baptised into the Church of England and also supported her financially, which could be monetary or arranging for an apprenticeship so there were some marketable skills at the ready upon coming Of Age. So sweet. This was actually A Thing under English common law.
"Of Age" at this time, for females, was 15. Key - who passed away later in 1636 - arranged for Elizabeth to be under the custody (Indentured Servitude, really) of the delightfully-named Humphrey Higginson for nine years. This would get Elizabeth to the age of 15. Once she hit 15, Elizabeth was free. Higginson promised to take care of her as though she was his own.
Indentured servitude was a good a way to start over in the Americas. If you could not afford your passage to America, you could bind yourself to someone else who paid your way, then work off your debt until you leveled up to Free. If you were already in debt (or prison), it was a way to wipe your slate clean. While "surviving your servitude" wasn't the least common thing, it wasn't out of the ordinary to totally survive and earn your freedom. There was also a sense of equality when it came to indentured servants and...everybody else, since the "indentured" part had an expiration date.
Anyhow, Humphrey Higginson (just take a minute and say it a few times, at first in your head, and then out loud, and then over and over again with a more and more affected accent each time) had apparently agreed to take Elizabeth with him if he was to return to England. Return to England Humphrey did, but without Elizabeth Key, having sort of subletted (or sold) her out to Colonel John Mottram.
Col. Mottram is something of a famous figure - the first white settler in Northumberland County, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, up near what would become Washington, D.C. Mottram's house became a haven for Protestants fleeing the colony of Maryland, which was established in 1632 by Lord Baltimore (Cecil Calvery) as the go-to colony if you were tired of getting persecuted in England because you were Catholic. Maryland was named after the French wife of England's King Charles - Henrietta Maria - a devout Catholic herself.
Mottram was a successful merchant and the nearby Potomac River/Chesapeake Bay was perfect. He brought Elizabeth as a servant. Mottram himself was the first Burgess from Northumberland County. We don't know much about Elizabeth Key's life from her Age 10 to Age 25 seasons. Probably because Mottram was out in the middle of freakin nowhere.
The colonies - Virginia, specifically (Massachusetts was doing just fine) - realized they need more of an incentive to populate the colonies. The previous strategy of "You might not die!" wasn't as effective as hoped, apparently. Enter the Headright System. Anyone who brought indentured servants to Virginia would be given 50 acres of land per indentured servant - a pretty incredible opportunity to amass a mess of land.
Around 1650 Mottram paid for 20 white indentured servants to come to Coan Hall - his plantation in Northumberland County. Each indentured servant was to serve for six years to pay off the cost of the passage. Mottram would receive 120 combined years of service and get 1,000 acres of land out of the deal.
Among the 20 indentured servants was 16-year old William Grinstead (or Greenstead! or you can get creative with how you might spell it! Because God knows they did!). No one is real sure what level of law proficiency William had. Some said it's reasonable to assume that his father was a lawyer and he was just a younger son. I say "just a younger son" because any male heir born after that first one - under the standard English practice of primogeniture - was sort of useless. Everything in the estate went to the firstborn son. My favorite professor in college, Dr. Dawn Alexander, referred to American colonists as "Seventh Sons of Seventh Sons," because there just wasn't anything left in England for the second-born sons on down to inherit. They had to go across the Atlantic to make a life. Others, though, when it came to William's "lawyer-ness" noted that he knew a little bit, though he was illiterate, but still could act in some formal capacity.
Regardless, Mottram knew the value of young lawdog Grinstead and used him for legal matters relative to Coan Hall. By this point Grinstead and Elizabeth had established a relationship that produced a son. They couldn't get married because Grinstead was still under his indenture, and no one really knows what the 20-year old Elizabeth's status was.
When Col. Mottram died in 1655 they came to settle up his estate. Elizabeth and her son, John, were classified as Enslaved and, thus, property of the estate. Luckily, Elizabeth knew a lawyer: her partner William Grinstead. They sued, alleging that, since Elizabeth had been indentured since she was six years old, her term should have ended at 15 - ten years earlier.
In the Akron Law Review it was argued that "subjecthood" and not "citizenship" was in question. Taunya Lovell Banks argued that if Elizabeth had been born to two English subjects, she would automatically be a British subject, no matter where she was born. But because she was born to an Englishman and an African mother, the burden of citizenship was on Elizabeth.
The court brought back a lot of the original witnesses in the paternity suit back in 1636. One guy remembered that Key said the father was a "Turk," which would have been super-convenient were it true, because Turks weren't Christians so then Elizabeth would - indeed - have been property of the Mottram Estate.
But then! an 80-year old former servant of Mottram's named Elizabeth Newman reminded everyone that Key was fined for getting one of his slaves pregnant. The Court agreed, and granted Elizabeth Key her freedom. Mottram's estate appealed the verdict to the general court who overturned it, saying that if Elizabeth Key's mother was enslaved when she was born, then she was enslaved herself. Back to the Mottrams for Elizabeth.
William Grinstead, Elizabeth Key's partner, babydaddy, and attorney, appealed that verdict to the Virginia General Assembly, who in 1656 appointed a committee to investigate the facts of the case before kicking it back to the courts for a retrial. After a retrial, Elizabeth was found to be free based on three counts:
1. (And the most important) Since Thomas Key was a free Englishman, and since the child's condition followed that of the father, Elizabeth was free. But she was also free because...
2. Again, Thomas Key was a free Englishman and
3. Elizabeth was a practicing Christian.
The General Assembly confirmed saying, "By the Common Law the Child of a Woman slave begott by a free-man ought to (be) free.
It didn't hurt matters that the court was reminded of Thomas Key's intention for Elizabeth to become free once she reached 15, and that Grinstead was also an English subject. Elizabeth was free. She and William were still not allowed to get married until William's indenture ended in 1656. Once it ended, William and Elizabeth Key Grinstead were one of the first marriages in Virginia's history between an Englishman and a free woman of African descent. Mottram's estate was ordered to compensate Elizabeth Key with corn and clothes to make up for keeping her freedom for so many years.
Elizabeth and William would have another son before William passed away in 1661. After William passed away, Elizabeth married a widower - John Pearce. When he passed away, Elizabeth and her two sons inherited 500 acres, setting themselves up for the rest of a successful life. If you're from the South and your last name is Grinsted, Grimsted, or Greenstead...there's a good chance that this is your story. And if your name is "Johnny Depp," this is your story, as well, apparently.
But that's not the end of the story, for this story is tied to slavery, and slavery is tied to the United States. In 1662 - the year after William Grinstead's death - the Virginia House of Burgesses took another look at Elizabeth's case, specifically "whether children got by an Englishmen upon a negro woman should be slave or free." This led the House of Burgesses to lay down the principle of Partus Sequitur Ventrum, or "that which is brought forth follows the womb."
The Virginia House of Burgesses moved the goalposts from Partus Sequitur Partum and overrode English common law with Partus Sequitur Ventrum. No longer did the father of an illegitimate child have to provide for the child after its birth. Rape was legalized in Virginia, since any child born of an enslaved mother would immediately upon birth become enslaved, as well. You don't have to make a very strong leap in logic to realize that the House of Burgesses incentivized rape of enslaved women. If you had produced a child with an enslaved woman, you were certainly free to care for the child and make sure their future was secure...but you didn't have to. The 1662 law also increased penalties for mixed-race fornication. In 1667 Virginia altered the law so that converting to Christianity did not come with a "Get Out of Slavery" card.
Other colonies followed suit. And as enslaved rebellions took hold over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, states relying on slavery as the basis of their economies made it harder and harder for enslaved people to sue for their freedom.
For Elizabeth Key and her sons, however, the court system of Virginia repeatedly acknowledged her freedom. Two of her grandsons were apprenticed to learn a trade in 1685, something that would be done for white kids, but not African kids or descendants of Africans. In 1686 Elizabeth's son sat on a jury, something reserved only for white men. Elizabeth was one of the first - if not the first - woman of African descent to sue for her freedom and win. But the colonies, later states, made sure it was one of the last times they would suffer the loss.
