State of Mississippi, Jefferson County, S. S. To Baltimore City Maryland Commissioner—Greetings.

1843 legal commission to summon a witness in Baltimore to give evidence in a trial in Mississippi

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Commission to summon witness John Higginbotham of Baltimore to give evidence in a Mississippi trial case, Kettlewell, Wilson, and Hilliard v. James Payne.

The commission is signed by James J. Collier, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Mississippi, on the order of Charles C. Cage, Presiding Judge of the Third Mississippi Judicial District. The plaintiffs in the case, Kettlewell, Wilson, and Hilliard, were wholesalers and commission merchants in Baltimore.

In order to obtain Higginbotham’s testimony in the suit, Judge Cage requests commissioners in Baltimore to examine the former on oath, to record his testimony and return it to the court in Mississippi.

James Payne appears to emigrated to Jefferson County from Baltimore in 1811. He owned a store at Payne’s Landing on the Mississippi River near the “Maryland Settlement” and another store at Rodney; he was also a land speculator. The present lawsuit may concern goods Payne purchased from Kettlewell, Wilson, and Hilliard of Baltimore.

Judge Charles Claiborne Cage (1809–1855) “...was a lawyer and politician in Mississippi. In 1833 he represented Pike County in the State Legislature. By 1836 he had moved to Woodville, Mississippi where he practiced law in the firm of Cage and Scudder. He formed a second partnership with Horatio F. Sirmall in April of 1839, and in November of that year he was elected Judge of the 3rd Circuit Court… He was re-elected to this seat in 1841. In 1845, he chose not to run for re-election, and established a cotton plantation in Fort Adams, Mississippi. He continued his Woodville law practice with his brother Benjamin, and he remained active in politics, serving as a representative to the State Democratic Convention in 1853 and the Democratic Legislative Committee in 1855. He also apparently was a party in a duel in the early 1840s.”¹

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