Cornelia Long seeks a divorce with alimony from her husband, Nicholas Long, citing his "brutal, inhumane, and grossly insulting" behavior towards her. Wildly jealous and convinced of her infidelities, Nicholas regularly cast "aspersions ... upon her virtue and chastity" and accused her of "indecencies and indignities" that would shock "any reflecting moral or religious individual." For example, Nicholas accused her of "aiding abetting and assisting" her brother "with using violence to a young lady of the neighbourhood, for the purpose of carnally knowing her without her consent." He further charged Cornelia with "taking a servant to watch while she was perpetrating acts of infidelity." Insisting that "she has stood the indignities offered to her long enough," she seeks a divorce from Nicholas, who is "impotent & incapable of procreation." She "only wants" the property that she had when she married Nicholas and demands that he deliver up "her wearing apparel instantly." In his answer, Nicholas denies all charges. He avers that Cornelia repeatedly told him that "if she was his wife she was not his slave and that she was white and free to go where she pleased." He also reports that she had six slaves when they married, but that when he went to Kentucky to retrieve them, her "interest in the negro property" was "bound up" and the slaves could not be removed from the state.
Result: Dismissed.
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Repository: Maury County Historical Society Loose Records Project, Columbia, Tennessee
