Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake won a court battle in Holmes v. Ford to end her fifteen-month struggle for freedom from Nathaniel Ford. The Holmes family belonged to Major Whitman, who was deeply in debt and sold the family to a merchant. Nathaniel Ford told Robin Holmes that an arrangement had been made for Nathaniel to keep the Holmes family as slaves. Nathaniel Ford wanted to move to Oregon and promised that if the Holmeses helped him establish the new farm in Oregon, he would set the family free. Ford did not honor his promise. After five years, he released the parents, Robin and Polly, and their newborn son but nine-year-old Mary Jane and her other siblings remained Nathaniel’s slaves. Abolitionists helped Robin Holmes sue Nathaniel for the freedom of Mary Jane and the rest of her siblings. This legal battle helped determine the status of slavery in the Oregon Territory.
