Eliza Mary Rivers Egan seeks a "means of support and maintenance of herself and her child" from her husband, John Egan. Noting that she married John in 1849, Eliza confesses that her husband "made an attempt on her life" with a knife during the first month of their marriage and that, on another occasion, he "flew into a violent rage accusing her of a design to have criminal intercourse with [a] slave and rushed out into the yard for an axe to take her life." The petitioner admits that these and other "demonstrations of violence on his part," coupled with "his fits of intoxication," have "compelled Your Oratrix to quit his house." Eliza states that "she owned five slaves at the time of her marriage" and that her husband "owns also five other slaves, a house and dry good store, with a good business." She also discloses that "she is entitled during her life to the interest on one Thousand Dollars now in the hands of Wm. Horace Rivers Trustee." Eliza therefore prays that the said John "may be ordered and decreed to make suitable and permanent provision for the comfortable maintenance of Your Oratrix and her child." She also asks that her husband be restrained "from disposing of by sale or otherwise or removing without the limits and jurisdiction of this Honorable Court any property of which he is now possessed." She further requests that the said Rivers receive the court's sanction to pay her the accrued interest on said $1000.
Result: Granted.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
