Mary Cannon petitions by her brother and next friend, Zachariah Glymph, for a separate maintenance from her estranged husband, George Cannon. Since their marriage in 1823, Mary asserts that her husband has been "unfaithful, void of affection, and brutal in the extreme." Soon after their marriage, she "at length began to hear from others that he had abandoned himself to a criminal intercourse with lewd women of the lowest order both black & white in the neighborhood." When she questioned him about an alleged "intimacy" with Catharine Adams, he "threatened to cut fifteen hickories & wear them out on her." She also found a love letter in his coat pocket in which he suggested to his "sweetheart" that he would get rid of his wife. When she finally left him, he came after her with a pistol and "actually fired it off" in her brother's home. Mary cites that she has a small amount of property, including "negroes," that she inherited from her father and grandmother, which her husband has threatened to sell before he leaves the state. She asks that he be restrained from this course, that she be "protected in living apart" from him, and that he be compelled to pay her alimony.
Result: Withdrawn by complainant.
Or you may view all people.
Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
