Sarah M. Mason seeks a divorce from her husband, Nathan Mason. The petitioner confesses "that not more than a twelve months had elapsed" before her husband "became insufferably abusive and violent to her, frequently beating and choking her, in a cruel and brutal manner." She also "charges that her said husband has since her said marriage visited women of ill fame and had adulterous or illicit intercourse with them." The petitioner represents that she received six slaves and a tract of land as her dower property from a former husband and that her current husband "was at the time of their intermarriage entitled to no property of any consequence, of his own, and that the estate of which he is now possessed in her right would amount to about Fifteen Thousand Dollars." Regarding "it as a duty which she owes to herself, and to the dignity of her sex, ... to sever the existing relation between them," Sarah Mason prays that the court will "grant a dissolution of said marriage" and will decree to her a "reasonable maintenance."
Result: Dismissed.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
