Sarah Ann and Benjamin Manson were an enslaved couple from Wilson County, Tennessee who had sixteen children. They had a marriage ceremony in 1843, but were not legally married until after the American Civil War. They were married on April 19, 1866, and received a marriage certificate from the Freedmen's Bureau. Two of their sons served during the war with the United States Colored Troops. After the war, Benjamin Manson was a farmer and minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His first wife died by 1899, and he married two more times in his life.

Marriage of enslaved people in the United States was generally not legal before the American Civil War (1861–1865). Enslaved African Americans were considered chattel legally, and they were denied human or civil rights until the United States abolished slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Both state and federal laws denied, or rarely defined, rights for enslaved people.