Josiah Houston of Talladega County asks the Court for a divorce from his wife, Matilda. Josiah claims that at the time of their marriage, Matilda "was pregnant a fact wholly unknown to your said orator and one which she artfully and designedly and fraudulently withheld from him." However, several months after their marriage, "her appearance indicated pregnancy." When confronted, Matilda denied that she was with child, assuring him "that his fears and jealousies should be quieted." Shortly thereafter, he writes, "to his great astonishment," Matilda was "delivered of a black child, the fruits of an illicit intercourse carried on between the said Matilda and a negro slave" belonging to her father. Because "Matilda in the above manner practiced a fraud too dark and damning to be tolerated in … a christian community, and whereby she cancelled and forfeited all obligations on his part to support, comfort assist and maintain her as well as all obligation to live with her as his wife," Josiah asks that the matrimonial bonds between them be dissolved. In an earlier petition, Matilda, a widow, had filed for divorce, alleging that her husband had abandoned her, had stolen her slave, and was getting ready to remove from the state and leave her penniless.
Result: Dismissed.
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Repository: Talladega County Judicial Building, Talladega, Alabama
