{"petition":[{"petition_analysis_number":"20185307","petition_url":"https:\/\/dlas.uncg.edu\/petitions\/petition\/20185307","state":"Alabama","county":"Dallas","location_type":"County","file_day":26,"file_month":2,"file_year":1853,"filing_court":"Chancery","end_day":0,"end_month":11,"end_year":1853,"ending_court":"Chancery","result":"dismissed","enslaved_count":0,"fpoc_count":0,"total_people_count":3,"repository":"Dallas County Courthouse, Selma, Alabama","abstract":"At age fifteen, Jane Adams believed William Chapman's \"repeated professions & promises of fidelity and affection,\" and thinking he possessed all the prerequisites for matrimonial happiness--honesty, sobriety, industry, and chastity--she accepted his proposal of marriage.  They were wed in 1834.  Jane's father, John Adams, gave her a separate estate of cash and three slaves worth two thousand dollars.  Shortly after their marriage, however, William became \"Cold in his affections & pitiful in his passions,\" leaving her for extended periods \"in Search of other & Strange Women.\"  He committed adultery on numerous occasions.  She, however, remained with him \"notwithstanding her husbands great want of affection & fidelity & his occasional harsh & brutal treatment.\"   She bore him six children, two of whom died, but when he brought a woman suspected of murder to live with them, she fled to her father's house.  William Chapman, Jane charges, continues to live \"with other & base & vicious Women.\"  \"She has done all that Woman Can or ought to do,\" she asserts, \"to reclaim her wayward husband.\"  She seeks a divorce.","subjects":[{"subject":"Adultery"},{"subject":"Divorce"},{"subject":"Domestic violence"},{"subject":"Abandonment "},{"subject":"Sex workers\/Promiscuity "}]}]}