Rebecca Maguire asks the court to protect her "in living separately" from her estranged husband, Peter Maguire, and to "make some suitable provision for" her family's support in the form of alimony. Rebecca claims that the "sallies of passion in which [Peter] often indulges frequently terminate in personal violence" towards her. She now finds that she cannot "disarm his violence," which last spring culminated in "a violent blow over her head with the bar of the door, by which he broke your Oratrix's head so it bled freely." He then "immediately" fled to Florida, taking eight of his slaves with him, and did not return until November, when he "so terrified his family" that Rebecca "fled in the night" to a neighbor's for refuge and their daughter hid all night in the kitchen with the slaves. Rebecca now fears that Peter will carry out his threat to leave again, this time taking her infant children with him. She asks the court to prevent him from leaving the state and depriving her of the property the couple derived from her father's estate when they married, including over $3000 worth of slaves.
Result: Partially granted; dismissed.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
