Adeline Turner seeks a divorce from her husband, William Porter. Adeline informs the court that she brought $450 into her 1828 marriage to William. Since the marriage, William has "acquired a community of property" that includes three slaves and eleven tracts of land. Adeline charges "that she has suffered excesses, & cruel treatment from her husband & outrages, so as to make her living with him any longer insupportable." She reports that William has whipped her "with a cow hide" and has stripped and exposed "her in the streets in this city & he has publickly defamed" her character "by calling her thief, whore, drunkard & other opprobrious epithets." Adeline also charges that William "has sent & employed certain persons, as emisaries to delude & induce her to leave the house for the purpose of finding a pretext & excuse to defraud her of her property & that he cohabits with his negresse Slave in the same room where this petitioner sleeps." Adeline therefore prays for a divorce, separation of property, custody of their two children, and rights to both her dowry and "one moyety of the community" property [Petition is damaged and one or more pages may be missing].
Result: Granted.
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Repository: New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, Louisiana
