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To his Excellency W.G. Brownlow Esq. 
Governor of the State of Tennessee
The undersigned Commissioners for Common Schools in the 12th Clarksville District of Montgomery County Tennessee would respectfully state - That they were elected to this present position on the 26th day of August 1865. Predecessors of theirs on the 21st Dec. 1859 for the sum of $136.35 purchased of DM Words an unimproved lot in Clarksville and took a conveyance fee from him which is of record in said County in the Registers Office in Book 5, pages 564 [[?]] 766, said lots containing one half of one acre; on the 12 May 1858 they also received a deed of gift for common School purposes from Joshua Elder for an adjoining lot of the same size, his deed being of Record in Book 5 pages 765 & 766
On said premises they have erected a common school house one hald of which is located respectively on those two lots. Said house and premises were used for school purposes until the cessation of the fund stopped the school. 
They now find all of said premises in the possession of the Freedmen's Bureau; the agent of the bureau here Col. Davis has been applied to by us for a restoration of the property and he declined the request. 
The grounds of his denial as we understand is an allegation of the following tenor. 
In 1855 D.M. Woods the owner of the first named lot contracted they allege verbally with sundry slaves to deed their said lot for the purpose of erecting an African Church, who paid him thereon in past $125- taking no title bond or written memorandum of such sale and of course no registration or notice was had or given. 
The purchase of our predecessors being subsequent to said alleged sale. The Common School Commissioners have been in open, notorious and adverse possession under said deeds from that time until evicted by the Military who seized and occupied said premises. A negro school has been taught there for months. The money paid Woods was paid in for "the Benevolent Society" a colored association principally of slaves. Col Davis now asserts that the negros - since freed - have a lien on said premises for said payment to Mr. Woods, who is dead. We do not know whether during the ten years he ever repaid or adjusted said matters; all that we know is the property is deeded regularly, has been in possession near 10 years and the possession has been changed by force.