Slave owner Samuel Acre, worth more than forty thousand dollars, responds to his wife's divorce petition with a petition of his own. He charges that his wife, Mary Ann Acre, left her house for a period of two years and, during this time, accrued a debt of $3,350 to various individuals and establishments. He points out that "he was arbitrarily, at her request, held in imprisonment, without warrant of law, and without ever the imputation of any accusation whatever," so she might indulge "unrestrainedly, in her lacivious propensities," to wit the seduction of a young man with whom, Acre charges, his wife committed adultery various times while he was in jail. In view of these facts, and since "it has become improper and indecent" for his wife "to remain an inmate in the dwelling house" of the petitioner, he asks the court to order that his wife go to the City Hospital "or to such other place as to your Honor shall seem meet and proper."
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Repository: University of South Alabama Archives, Mobile, Alabama
