Subject of United States Supreme Court Ruling. She received recognition as the subject of a United States Supreme Court ruling, the Dred Scott Decision, in the pre-Civil War era. Born a slave, Harriet Robinson met her future husband Dred Scott at the military fortress of Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory. She was the slave of Indian agent Major Lawrence Taliaferro, who brought her with his family from Virginia where slavery was legal. Major Lawrence had not purchased her but somehow inherited her. She had not been a field hand on a plantation but trained to be a house maid. Upon her civil wedding ceremony, which was performed by Major Lawrence, she was given to her husband. She was seventeen and her husband was forty. Instead of being emancipated from slavery, her ownership was transferred to her husband's owner, Dr. John Emerson. Slavery was not legal in the Wisconsin Territory. Since the couple lived in Wisconsin on "free land," they decided to sue for their freedom along with that of their two daughters. After relocating to Missouri with Dr. Emerson, she chose to use as her lawyer, Francis Murdoch, who had filed petitions for other female slaves with cases as strong as hers. Her case was "once free, always free." The Scott couple had met in free the territory of Wisconsin and moved between slave and free territory together for a total of three times. After Scott's request to buy his family's freedom was denied by their current owner the widow Irene Emerson, she convinced her husband to file petitions in court. On April 6, 1846, two petitions were filed in Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis, one by Dred Scott and the other was hers. About a year later, the cases made their way before a judge. In spite of the fact that former owner of Scott, Henry Taylor Blow, was one of the witnesses who testified on the Scott's behalf, they lost the case. A new trial began in 1850 and the jury declared that the Scott couple had been slaves, but were now free. Mrs. Emerson's lawyers immediately filed an appeal. In March 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court declared that the Scott family was slaves. By this time Irene Emerson had transferred the couple's ownership to her brother John Sanford. Then Northern lawyer Roswell Field heard about the case. He knew that the United States Constitution could be used to protect the Scott family's freedom and that the case could be argued in front of the United States Supreme Court. In May of 1854, the Scott vs Sanford case came before the federal court in St. Louis, where they lost the case. Finally, in 1856, the case reached the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where the Scott's appeal for liberty was struck down for the final time. The infamous "Dred Scott Decision" was made stating slaves did not have the civil rights that were provided by the United States constitution, thus could not sue. Within a few months, their ownership was transferred to Taylor Blow, a son of one of the former owners of Dred Scott. The Blow family along with churches and abolitionists had financed the court cases. Blow signed freedom papers for the Scott family, but her husband died of tuberculosis not long afterwards. She continued to live in St. Louis, doing laundry and ironing, until her death. In the 1997 "Yale Law School Journal" article "Mrs. Dred Scott," authors Lea Vander and Velde Sandhya Subramanian provide details about the case stating "Mrs. Scott's case was stronger than her husband's case, yet her evidence was buried in his case." A statue of Harriet and Dred was unveiled on June 19, 2002 outside the old courthouse in St. Louis. She and her husband were buried in separate cemeteries. Although Dred and Harriet were not of the Catholic faith, Taylor Blow owned plots in the Calvary Cemetery and sponsored Dred's burial in the Catholic cemetery. At the time of Harriet's death, no one would sponsor her burial in the Catholic cemetery, thus she was buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Her grave was overlooked for years, but in 2002 it was discovered by the cemetery historian and marked.