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debts of her husband. She respectfully suggests that her property thus acquired by virtue of a contract made in 1831, long anterior to the breaking out of the war, should not have been seized for any supposed or real disloyalty of her husband.

Your petitioner further showeth that it could not have been seized as abandoned property for it never was abandoned. She resided in another house in a different part of the city of Natchez & had been accustomed, since the year 1836, or thereabouts to rent the above described property to other persons. She respectfully showeth that at the time the  Federal soldiers took possession of Natchez to-wit, the 13th day of July, 1863, the house and lot was occupied by Mrs. Susan Knott as lessee that Mrs. Knott had occupied that premises for some time prior to the occupancy of the city as aforesaid, and was not placed in the building to evade the rules and regulations of the Departments of the U.S. government that sometime afterward for some cause unknown to your petitioner, the said Mrs. Knott vacated the premises and went beyond the lines of the Federal Army that your petitioner immediately made efforts to secure another tenant that she is informed that her then agent Albert Mellen offered to lease the said