Sixteen-year-old Jane E. Owen seeks a divorce from her sixty-two-year-old husband, Sterling Owen. The petitioner laments that said Sterling has "rendered her condition intolerable." She reveals that he "became and was without cause strongly affected with jealousy towards your oratrix" and that he "falsely charged your oratrix with the crime of adultery with two of his own negro fellows." Jane confides that on the night of 3 June 1837 her husband fired a pistol into her right shoulder and that "her clothes were set on fire by the pistol, that she was badly burned by its fire, and that the ball of said pistol has lodged in her shoulder her Physicians not having been able to extract it." The petitioner reports that her husband is the owner of 2 tracts of land, 15 valuable slaves, and sundry other personal property. Fearful that said Sterling "will sell and dispose of his property for the purpose of defrauding her of her alimony," the petitioner prays that an injunction be issued to "restrain said defendant from selling or disposing of any of his real or personal property until out of the same a suitable maintenance be allowed and secured to your oratrix." She also requests that the court "decree to your oratrix a divorce or separation from bed and board from said defendant forever."
Result: Partially granted.
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Repository: Williamson County Courthouse, Franklin, Tennessee
