{"petition":[{"petition_analysis_number":"11680206","petition_url":"https:\/\/dlas.uncg.edu\/petitions\/petition\/11680206","state":"Virginia","county":"Fluvanna","location_type":"County","file_day":13,"file_month":12,"file_year":1802,"filing_court":"Petition","result":"reasonable, reported","enslaved_count":1,"fpoc_count":0,"total_people_count":3,"repository":"Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia","abstract":"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.","subjects":[{"subject":"Divorce"},{"subject":"Interracial relationships"},{"subject":"Illegitimacy "}]}]}