After several years of marriage, to his "great grief, mortification and shame," Stephen Cole found out with anguish that his wife Mary "was delivered of a mulatto child." Upon investigation Cole discovered that Mary had probably committed adultery with a slave named Richmond who belonged to the estate of Daniel McDonald, deceased. He seeks a divorce. In her related answer to the charges, Mary Cole accuses her husband of domestic violence and drunkenness, and of forcing her to seek refuge in the kitchen where she slept among the slaves. She claims that she does not know what may have happened under such conditions. She also countercharges that her husband commits adultery with his own slave, Bet, who sleeps with them in the bed.
Result: Granted.
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
