Sarah Pester asks that her husband John provide "a competent and seperate provision" for her and her four children. Married for sixteen years, Sarah confesses that "she has lived a miserable and wretched life with the said John Pester." She charges that her husband "in a Gust of passion cruelly seized and dragged her in the nighttime" and that he "continued to abuse her and threaten her life so that your Oratrix expected nothing but instant death." She further reveals that said John has "deserted her company and society and that of her children and lives the principal part of his time in a state of ... adultery with the wife of another man." Sarah reports that her father gave the couple two slaves upon their marriage; the female slave Hannah now has seven children, and John sold the male slave John, purchasing Big Tom in his place. She contends that John "has sold and alienated" the "little property" that he brought to the marriage, and she "verrily believes he intends shortly to sell and alienate" the property that remains and "to depart the State and leave your Oratrix and her infant children destitute." Sarah prays that John be compelled to make an adequate provision for her and her children and that "he deliver over to their use and benefit a certain portion of the Estate." She also asks that he be restrained "from wasting and making away with the said Estate."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
