Polly Berry, also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash (b. ca. 1818 – d. ca. 1870–1880), was an enslaved African American woman who on October 3, 1839 filed a freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri, which she won in 1843 based on having been held illegally as a slave for an extended period of time in the free state of Illinois. In 1842 Berry sued for the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry, based on partus (the child is born into the status of the mother), which she won in 1844 in a case argued by Edward Bates, the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln.
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