Married for almost forty-seven years, Piety Tisdale prays for a divorce and alimony from her husband William Tisdale. Piety informs the court that she and William lived together happily for fifteen years, she explains, but then William began "to carry on speculations in negroes & commenced the indulgence of dissipated habits, which grew upon him slowly but regularly for the span of fifteen years or thereabouts." Eventually, she says, he became "brutal & ferocious," a drunk and a spendthrift, finally abandoning her and their children, one them a crippled boy, altogether.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
