To his Excellency Beriah Maggoffin
Govener of the Commonweath of Kentucky

Your petitioners, Citizens of Owsley County would most respectfully represent to your excellency that Milton G Mize a Citizen of Estill County stands indicted in the Owsley Circuit Court for passing Counterfeit Money. Your petitioners would further state that Said Mize has always bourn a good character, both for trouth and honesty & fair dealing, & is now a man of near Sixty years of age with a large family of boys and Girls of nearly all ages [&] the most of whom are dependent on him for a support, that he is nearly Connected with the most respectable families in the Country and has a numerous train of relatives of high respectability, and the said indictment is very annoying and distressing to all his relatives, Said Mize lived amongst us for a number of years, and deported himself as a Gentleman and was entitled to the highest respect.

We would represent that If the trial should proceed and M^r Mize proven guilty of the charge (which

in fact we cannot now conceed) that from his former good name and many long years of previous integrity. We could only account for the fact of the principle of some strange hallucination or temporary aberation of Mind.

Your Excellency will Know that they are cases of this Kind, and that reflection would determine otherwise. We would be as much opposed as your Excellency Could be to letting loose bad men again on the Country but this case is not such an one,

We take it that the accused is still an honest man and freed from this indictment would be a good and useful Citizen, Your Excellency Could not interpose in a more suitable case than this.

We therefore ask that said Mize be released from said charge and the indictment dismissed, We ask this in all candor and with a firm Conviction that there is no one that desires said Mize to be distressed with said prosecution and believe that it would meet to general approbation and approval of the good Citizens of our community.

December 10^th 1860

H C Smith
Robert Wilson

Robert Rose
James E. Gibson
D B Cappo Att
John C. Cole Clk o c c
J, C Harnester
E B Treadway (sheriff)
H B Hampton

We the citizens of Estil concur in the above petition & ask the pardon of D^r M G Mize