In 1801, Dabney Pettus married Elizabeth Morris, "a woman descended from honest industrous parents, & of unspoled Character." Dabney and Elizabeth lived "with all the affection & tenderness that cou'd possibly exist between husband & wife" for about four months, when, to his "great astonishment & inexpressible mortification," Dabney discovered that his wife was "deliver'd of a Mulatto Child." Dabney claims that the child was "begotten by a negro man slave in the Neighborhood." Dabney and Elizabeth have agreed to divorce and Pettus asks the legislature to pass a law "to divorce him from the said Elizabeth." A testimony reveals that the father of Elizabeth's child was a slave named Bob who belonged to her grandfather.
Result: Reasonable, reported.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
