Marriage on the Border by Allison Dorothy Fredette

Author:Allison Dorothy Fredette [Fredette, Allison Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, Social History
ISBN: 9780813179186
Google: jsPRDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2020-04-21T16:10:10+00:00

Note: These data are derived from all cases encompassing these years found at the Library of Virginia, accessed through the online Chancery Court Records Index; in circuit court cases on microfilm at the West Virginia and Regional History Center, Morgantown, West Virginia; and original copies of the circuit court records at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky. All statistics reflect the number of cases found, since numerous natural and man-made disasters may account for cases missing or destroyed.

Of course, Virginia judges may have applied a harsher legal standard to postwar cases, leading litigants to pile on more charges to get the same results. So, Fauquier, Amelia, and Tazewell County litigants seeking divorce in the volatile postwar world may have manipulated their cases, playing up their woes, to obtain these more favorable verdicts.63 However, another explanation is also plausible. With the social upheaval caused by southern surrender, emancipation, and women’s changing roles, Virginia marriages may simply have become more acrimonious in the postwar years.64 The lack of satisfaction on the part of both partners may have led to more quarrelsome and even violent relationships. If this is the case, the higher number of charges in the three Virginia counties suggests that couples there had a more difficult adjustment to the postwar world than many couples in Kentucky and West Virginia.

A sample petition shows the volatility of some marriages in the postwar years. Though they had been married since the 1850s, John and Virginia Walden’s marriage grew increasingly acrimonious after the war. Shortly before their 1867 separation, John Walden’s behavior had become unbearably cruel, Virginia told the Fauquier County Circuit Court. John cursed his wife, insulted her, and “wished she was dead.” Once, he repeatedly punched her in the head, and another time, he “tried to throw her over the barristers of the stairway saying he would break her d-d neck.” Finally, in 1867, he drove her from their home, lashing her with a carriage whip. She fled to Warrenton, unsupported and alone. John Walden told the court that his wife had been “insubordinate” and defended some, if not all, of his actions.65

Although she did not explicitly state that the end of the war caused the change in her marriage, Margaret Tunstall of Amelia County, Virginia, told the court that her husband’s abuse worsened in 1865 before he finally abandoned her entirely. Her husband was neglectful, lazy, “thriftless,” abusive, and frequently intoxicated. All this occurred before his eventual abandonment, an event that “compelled” her to apply for a divorce. Margaret, like many of her fellow Virginia petitioners, leveled a number of charges against George, her husband, and pleaded with the court that she had only taken such a drastic step because her life had truly been in danger. Her deponents reiterated her story of abuse, especially the abuse occurring in 1865. Her mother stated that George frequently hit her daughter and often expressed a desire to kill her. Another neighbor heard George whipping his wife. Margaret called out to the neighbor, pleading for him to stop George from “beating her to death.

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